


All Things Shining

by Askance, standbyme



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, F/M, M/M, Original Mythology, Road-trip, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-10
Updated: 2013-04-09
Packaged: 2017-12-08 00:54:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 141,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/755094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance/pseuds/Askance, https://archiveofourown.org/users/standbyme/pseuds/standbyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something in the world is waking up.</p>
<p>It isn’t long before it’s brought to the attention of the Winchesters and Castiel: miracles are spreading across the country, the paranormal seems to be shrinking back on itself—and it all has something to do with the missing prayer book of a traveling preacher who died over a century ago.</p>
<p>Dean is convinced it’s all the lead-up to another Apocalypse; Sam and Castiel aren’t so sure. Regardless, it sends them out on a less-than-typical road-trip, following the Mississippi and remnants of a very old story that seems increasingly to call to them. And along the way the trio learn much more about themselves—and the consequences and origins of love—than they’d ever have anticipated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Winona, MN

**Author's Note:**

> While it is not necessary to have any prior knowledge of the Myth of the Star and the Catfish to understand this story, most of the works that make up the myth can be found [here](http://casinpanties.tumblr.com/tagged/the-star-and-the-catfish/chrono) and [here](http://jimmynovaks.tumblr.com/tagged/star-and-catfish/chrono).

“ _Can I tell you a story? One that I have heard?”_

 

* * *

 

Looking back—had he been the one to record it all, or been any kind of novelist—Sam Winchester might have started at the beginning with _it was quiet. Too quiet._ Which was, in fact, the case, on almost all counts; in the moment he would have chosen, there was a kind of silence. The muted percussion of whatever cassette Dean had in the system, and the gentle hum of the road, and the vague double-time of Castiel tapping his fingers in rhythm on the passenger door.

 

Sam was in the back seat, for once—later he would not remember why—but at the time it was for a very small reason. Cas had injured his knee on the hunt and needed the space to prop his leg out; that was all. The abstract evening stuck in his mind, the sun going down off in the distance, behind the bluffs; everything grey, dull, low clouds catching up the glow of the end of the day.

 

_Quiet._ It was the only way he could think of, in the end, to capture the stillness of everything in that instant, and everything that had come after, and most of all the unexpected and inexplicable appearance of good in the world.

 

* * *

 

St Cloud, Minnesota, and a kobold—what was meant to be a four-day job had become a two-week endeavor. They'd run into a local pair of hunters, Rebecca and Nathan, who had insisted on helping out, much to Dean's chagrin. “This is why we work alone,” he'd said, sixteen times all told, by the time the hunt was over.

 

“They were just trying to help,” Sam said, breaking the silence of the car, his voice sounding too loud for the space and drowning out the riff of guitar bleeding from the speakers up front. “And besides, it’s over now.” He’d been watching his brother’s face for some time, and knew Dean was itching for a chance to go off again. It was in the way he kept adjusting his hands on the wheel or shifting his leg under the dashboard restlessly.   
  


“They were out of shape and we had to do double the work just to compensate,” Dean snapped, glancing at Cas’ swollen left knee cap, the Ace bandage bulging under his pants leg. His eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror where Sam was staring back at him.   
  


“Well, tell us how you really _feel_ , Dean” he said lightly, and Dean rolled his eyes back to the road. Sam sighed in the long pause that followed.

 

Dean’s forehead scrunched as he considered the question, glancing at Cas in the rear-view mirror every now and then. Cas sat silently beside him, watching the landscape scroll by, his eyes thoughtful as they watched the shadows of the trees lengthen in the dimming light. His injury made him look more morose than usual.

 

Cas listened attentively to the idle conversation, but kept his eyes out the window, the muted southern sky making his face sullen and the set of his mouth apologetic. He wasn’t either of those things at the moment – he felt oddly excited. Nervous energy curled in the center of him, and he rubbed his knuckle against the side of the door, worrying at his borrowed skin.

 

They slipped back into a sulk. Dean puzzled over Sam’s comment, turning it over and over in his head, trying to make sense of why he couldn’t form any sort of articulate answer. He had no idea why he had absorbed it so directly when it didn’t mean anything – just one of Sam Winchester’s ‘greatest sarcastic hits.' He rolled his shoulders stiffly and exhaled, his toes cracking in his boot when he flexed his foot, eyes blinking and retraining on the highway. The tired paint streaked under the Impala like runaway stars on the black tarmac. Cas, watching them too, thought they looked a lot like the dashed lines of a treasure map. His mouth quirked into a small smile.

 

“I feel hungry,” Dean said, and the others looked up at him. Dean set his jaw resolutely, glad to have settled the brooding question, and searched for an exit sign.

 

“Winona is close,” Sam replied, his own stomach feeling painfully empty all of a sudden.

 

“Winona it is,” Dean said. He reached forward to turn up the radio, but there was nothing good playing, so he turned it down again instead, the hush swelling in the cab again.

 

Though he wasn’t hungry, Cas delighted in the idea of stopping and being able to stretch his stiff leg and shake out the kernel of anticipation still tumbling around inside of him. He rubbed at his knee, the muscles burning where he’d torn them, itching slightly under the bandage. Dean popped his gum obnoxiously, the sweet flavor having waned into the dull taste of toothpaste, watching for exit signs and fidgeting every few seconds.

 

Sam looked unseeingly at the road, at the white lines rolling past beneath them as they went.

 

* * *

 

They pulled in through the bluffs around Winona, Minnesota just as the sun was setting completely. The streets were quiet in a way that suggested they were always quiet, that hardly anything stirred in this place. Clapboard houses, tall and leaning trees.

 

In searching for a place that looked cheap for dinner they passed a park by the water—and the water was what drew Cas' drifting attention as they rounded the corner, the silhouettes of late-twilight walkers and the shadows of the hills on the water. He was tired, ready for a good night's sleep, and the vague conversation in the car had dulled to soft noise in the periphery of his mind, and his thoughts were floating. He could smell the river through the cracked Impala windows.

 

He was in a daze when the car came to an abrupt parking stop in the lot of a diner that looked straight from the sixties and blinked, startled back to clarity. The whole world slotted back into place with the push of Dean's hand on his arm and the pop of the door opening.

 

“Earth to Cas,” Dean said. “Come on, m'starved.”

 

They went inside (Cas more slowly, leaning on his good leg) to find black-and-white tile lit up by buzzing fluorescent lights, canned muzak streaming from somewhere they couldn't place. All in all an entirely normal diner in an entirely normal town; just what Dean wanted after the fiasco in St Cloud.

 

He slid into the far end of a red-plasticine booth, to let Cas have the most room to stretch his leg. There was a faraway look in the angel's eyes that was creeping into Sam's, as well. He'd have to remember to ask the waitress for the name of the nearest and cheapest motel; he didn't feel like digging out a map or guessing their way. Not tonight.

 

A woman in a yellow dress with a Peter Pan collar came by to give them sticky menus and drinks in tall glasses, and as she turned to leave Dean heard the diner door open with a clatter of the tiny bell.

 

“Sit anywhere you like, hon,” the waitress said, and Dean, for no particular reason, glanced over his shoulder.

 

A bone-thin young man, hardly more than a teenager, had come in, all pale haphazard hair and big blue eyes, and he was working his jaw in a way that said he was nervous. He met Dean's gaze for half an instant and then wandered towards the counter, to slide onto one of the high stools and tap his fingers anxiously on the bar.

 

“Dean, quit staring.”

 

Dean faced front again in the booth seat.

 

“I wasn't,” he said, throwing Sam a look. He glanced at Cas, who looked ready to faceplant into his menu, and nudged him. “Don't fall asleep, man, we haven't even gotten our food yet.”

 

“Mmm.” Cas yawned and pulled at his eyes. He blinked at Dean, owlish. “What were you staring at?”

 

“I wasn't staring—”

 

“Kid who came in,” Sam muttered, looking meaningfully over Cas' shoulder. Cas turned a little in his seat, wincing at the burn of torn muscle in his leg; when he saw the young man at the bar, he frowned.

 

“He looks half-starved,” he said, too loud for Dean's comfort, and Dean nudged his foot to hush him.

 

“Understatement,” Dean murmured.

 

The waitress came back with their food—the usual, the ordinary, double cheeseburgers for Dean and Castiel, Caesar salad for Sam—and Cas brightened a little at the sight of something edible.

 

He found the stranger's reflection in the darkening window glass to Sam's left, across the table. The young man's back was bowed, slumped down over the counter, spine visible through his thin grey T-shirt. The bones of his elbows were stark and white; the bit of voice he caught as the yellow-dress waitress asked for his order was thin and young, tremulous.

 

“It's a shame,” he said, drawing Sam and Dean's attention from their food. “He seems poor. In need.”

 

Dean followed the path of his gaze. “Is that our problem?”

 

“Not necessarily,” Cas said, rubbing salt from his fingers; he watched as the boy took long gulps of chocolate milk, the small plate of hash browns he’d ordered untouched, the ketchup a red smear on top. Dean turned back to the angel and narrowed his eyes, tongue digging food from his teeth. He crammed another bite into his mouth and refused to look back over his shoulder. Cas was distracted enough for the two of them, pecking at his plate and casting his melancholy eyes at the stranger’s back.

 

“Look, it sucks for him, it does, but we’re not a charity,” Dean said sharply. Sam made a face at his salad while he attempted to spear a crouton with his fork. Castiel didn’t reply, tilting his head slightly, eyes fixed in the boy’s direction. Dean grumbled, threw his burger down, and turned – the pale blonde head snapped back to the plate, but a hot flush was working up the back of his neck and his ears were bright read.

 

“I’ve lost my appetite,” Cas said simply, pushing his plate forward with a dull scrape. Dean wanted to glare but he was too tired, and his eyes were watering from the hypnotic strain of driving. He sagged against the back of the booth and busied himself with eating while Cas pitched his silent fit, padding his fingers along the rim of his water glass, the ice glinting under the fluorescent light.

 

“So,” Sam tried, and Dean kept chewing, and Cas kept looking impassively at his water, leaving Sam to tap his fork against his bowl. “Good talk,” he mumbled into his coffee. He finished his drink and his eyebrows crawled together, his fingers twitching with that feeling of being watched. He glanced up, setting the mug down and the boy met his eyes for a startled second before ducking his head yet again, shoulders hunched even more than before. Dean growled in frustration and pulled out his wallet, slapping a few bills on the table.

 

“I’m done, you done?” he asked, looking purposefully at Sam. Sam nodded, relieved they were leaving and could find some place to crash for the night. He just hoped Dean had enough energy to find somewhere with a bed.

 

Castiel wiped the condensation off of his hand onto the napkin beside his plate and slowly extracted himself from the booth, swaying slightly once he was on his feet. Dean followed, hauling himself up with a groan; his back was stiff and every inch of him wanted to lie down and not get up again for a few years. Dean brushed by Cas, and Sam shook his head at Dean’s mood, the three of them migrating towards the cash register. Walking past the boy, Dean could hear him scraping his plate, eager to get as much food as he could, and the sound followed him all the way down the counter to the check out.

 

“How are you doing tonight? Well, I hope!” the waitress behind the register said, taking the receipt from Dean’s hand and ringing them up. She was younger than the one they’d been served by, her eyeliner a little smudged from working all day, but her voice cheerful over the tinny music.

 

“Just fine,” Dean grunted, throwing a tired smile at her. She blushed, tucking a bit of her dirty blonde hair behind her ear, the hand falling to straighten her collar self-consciously. He let his eyes wander down the bar to where the kid was still huddled over the remains of his food. Dean closed his eyes. He was never going to hear the end of this.

 

“Wait, just a second there, darlin’,” Dean smiled, warming it up for her. She paused, and Dean jerked his thumb towards the kid who was currently sucking down his second glass of chocolate milk. “You think he’d mind if I picked up his tab? I just got paid today and I have a little extra.”

 

“Yann?” she asked, following his hand to where the boy was. He was staring at Dean, his eyes round as dinner plates, his face looking even more drawn in surprise. “No, I don’t think he’d mind...is that credit?”

 

“Yes ma’am,” Dean finished, handing it to her. She swiped it for him and handed it back, looking up through her lashes.

 

“That was really kind of you—” she started, and Dean quickly cut her off before she could lay into the flattery.

 

“Don’t mention it.”

 

Cas watched Dean’s back as he put his wallet back into his pocket, turning around and raising his eyebrows at him.

 

“Happy?” Dean hissed, and Cas’ subdued smile answered him. The angel tipped his chin forward a fraction, like a nod, and Dean shook his head. Whatever. Sam seemed happy too, his mouth held in the way that begged to call Dean out for it, but one look and it tucked itself out of sight. Dean took the receipt from the waitress and stuffed it into his jacket as he turned away, eager to get out of the diner and out from under the smell of grease and wet dish towels.

 

The three of them shuffled out the door, Sam burying a toothpick in his mouth, chewing it more out of habit than necessity, none of them thinking about the sudden scrape of shoes on the concrete behind them and the clang of the door falling shut as someone else left. Dean fished around for his keys, keeping a close eye on Cas as he hobbled around the front of the Impala, standing patiently on the other side, waiting for Dean to unlock it. He leaned against the door and stared out across the highway to the river – the street lights had come on and the water sparkled in the artificial glow from the park. A flock of birds trembled out of a tree, their silhouettes melting in with the darkness, wings flapping and marring what little starlight could be seen as they went careening off into the thickets across the water.

 

“Hey!” Sam said, suddenly, and Dean whipped his head over his shoulder to where his brother was staring down the pale teenager from the diner. He was standing halfway between the diner and the car, rubbing his skeletal arm up and down nervously, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

 

“You alright?” Sam called; the kid looked at the asphalt for a moment, stiffening, and then tipped forward.

 

Dean slowly unclenched his fist as the scrawny stranger approached them, rolling his eyes. “Look, if it’s about your bill,” he began, and the boy—Yann, Dean remembered—shook his head sharply side to side, his skinny arms flapping frantically.

 

“N-no! No, it’s, uh…” He paused, thinking. “ _N_ _ot_ that I don’t appreciate that, but, that’s not – that’s not what I came out here for.”

 

Dean gave him a look that clearly said _well?_ and Yann stuffed his hands in his pockets, the bones of his knuckles stark under the thin fabric, eyes darting all around the quickly descending twilight and the parking lot and the water before finally settling somewhere between Dean's shoulder and his chin.

 

“—you people are hunters, right?” he said, voice timorous, and all three of them recoiled visibly, subtle shifts of their shoulders backwards as if in flight.

 

 

* * *

 

Dean—who by this point was reaching negative levels of tolerance for anything out of the ordinary—drove them, all four, to the nearest motel, booked a few nights with the sourest look on his face Sam had seen in a while, and herded Yann between the three of them into the dark, cold cube of a room. He flicked on the buzzing lights; Cas sat down hard on the far bed, Sam folded his arms and fixed the kid with a stiff look, and Dean shot home the door lock before turning to face him.

 

Yann stood awkwardly in the middle of the pebbled, off-green carpet, rubbing his arms anxiously, looking between them all with a little fear on his face.

 

“How did you know we were hunters?” Dean asked. His tone of voice was one that clearly indicated he had no time for this; from across the room Cas gave him a weary look of placation.

 

The kid looked like he was about to burst into tears, or maybe vomit; he couldn't have been more than nineteen. “Look, I—I keep tabs on this stuff. Just in case, you know? Just—you know. I—I heard through the grapevine there were hunters coming through so I thought—I thought of all people maybe you could help me. I'm sorry, I don't—I don't want any trouble. Please—”

 

“Back up,” Sam said, holding out a hand, palm up. “Who told you we were coming?”

 

“N-no one—like I said, I keep tabs. I hear things.”

 

“Help you with what?” Cas chimed in, sounding significantly more interested in the proceedings of the hour than he had in anything all evening. His injured leg was stuck out stiff in front of him. “A case?”

 

Yann blinked at him, and then blinked nervously at the brothers, and then fixed his eyes stolidly on the floor.

 

“I'm—oh God,” he said, burying his face in his skeletal hands.

 

He took a few deep, shaking breaths before he said, “I'm—I'm a werewolf. And I haven't turned in two months.”

 

The silence that fell was tangible.

 

“You're a _what_?” Dean said, finally, dangerously, and Yann let out a noise that might have been a moan and sank backwards against the wall, hiding his face in his hands.

 

“Oh, God, I'm—I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said, I just—”

 

Cas sat up straighter, staring at the kid. Sam saw Dean reaching for his gun and barked out a _hey!_ and his hand fell to Dean's arm to stay it. Sam stepped in front of him, shielding the boy, almost, and they waited until Yann looked up from his hands. His face was corpse-white and he was shaking, visibly, looking at them all now not with anxiety but fear.

 

“Let me get this straight,” Sam said, slow and calm, holding out steadying hands. “You're—a werewolf?”

 

Yann nodded, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. Tears were hovering on his eyelids.

 

“And you need our help?”

 

“I haven't—” He swallowed, hard, seemed to try to regain his bearings. “I haven't turned in at least two full moons. I know I haven't. And—and I thought you could help me.”

 

“Help you turn again?”

 

“ _No,_ no, I don't _want_ to turn, God—help me—I don't know—”

 

“Hey—just calm down a minute, okay?” Sam took a hesitant step forward as if to touch Yann's shoulder and Yann flinched.

 

“If you could—please put your gun away I might be able to—”

 

Sam swiveled his head and glared at Dean, who had untucked his gun from the back of his jeans. Dean returned the look but obliged, snapping the safety back on and putting the gun on the motel dinette. He showed his empty hands to the kid and crossed his arms.

 

 

* * *

 

Cas went to the front desk and bought a few bags of tea, and brought them back for Yann. The four of them sat in awkward silence while the coffeepot boiled water until Cas brought the mug to the dinette and placed it in Yann's shivering hands, and sat down opposite him, next to Dean, and quietly said, “Tell us everything.”

 

“Are you going to kill me?” Yann blurted, betraying his fears, and immediately ducked his head, staring into the swirling, darkening water in the mug.

 

Dean opened his mouth as if to say _yes_ but Cas nudged his foot under the table. Sam, beside the boy, said, “No. We just want an explanation, that's all.”

 

Yann swallowed hard, and took a tenuous sip of his tea.

 

“I got—turned. Years ago. I was thirteen, maybe, I don't remember, but—I've always done my best to never hurt anyone. I swear, okay?” He looked at all of them, hand flat on the table as if to push his point. “Every month I make up some excuse to go, you know, up. Away from people. My uncle has this cabin, he never uses it. Way up by St Cloud.”

 

“Is that where you heard about us?”

 

“Not—not you. Not you in particular. But I knew you guys existed, you hunters. And I always did my best to stay away from you, from them. From everybody. I don't want to _hurt_ anybody.”

 

Dean looked at him hard. There was true sincerity on Yann's face, so heavy that it was pulling down the corners of his eyes, the corners of his mouth, drawing lines down his skin. He was young but he might as well have been Dean's age, for all the worry on his face.

 

“So I go up there, whenever the full moon's about to come out. I lock myself in the cabin until it's over, and I've—I've never found any blood, no one's ever died when I'm up there, I check to make sure. I haven't hurt a soul since it started, I swear, I swear to God.” His voice cracked and dissolved and he took another hasty drink, gasped when it burned his throat, pressed a hand to his face.

 

“Let's say for a minute we believe you,” Dean said, ignoring the dark looks Sam and Cas shot his way. “Why should we help you with anything? You're a monster.”

 

“I know, I know, God—”

 

“Dean,” Cas murmured, firmly, an unspoken _that's not necessary_ trailing after the name. Dean pinched the bridge of his nose, rearranging his words. Yann took a rattling breath and pressed his lips tightly together.

 

“Because it’s not about me,” he said, hurried, before Dean could say anything else. Yann glanced up, the dark circles under his eyes prominent in the swinging light above the table. “If it were about me I wouldn’t have let myself live this long,” he continued, his voice even, grounded in the statement. “I would have killed myself long before now if I didn’t have to take care of my mom.”

 

Dean knew it was a losing battle. Yann’s eyes didn’t stray from his own, his face the most tranquil it had been since meeting them in the parking lot. There was a safety and calm in internalizing your role. They were all familiar with that one. He was telling the truth; it was the same face Dean made in the mirror when he told himself certain things, certain realities he had completely accepted. Dean looked at Sam, and then Cas, but they were busy staring at the werewolf, concern written on their features.

 

“I don’t have a dad or anything,” he continued. “It was just me and Mamma, and she can’t afford her medication without me, so please—” He pressed his hand into the table again. “Please understand, if she weren’t here, I promise I would have already killed myself.”

 

“So what would you like us to do about it?” Dean said, tiredly, once Yann had finished.

 

“I was hoping you might know what was going on?” he said, his voice back to its meekness. “It’s terrible. Two months. I haven’t slept. I can barely eat – every night I think I’m going to just, just—” He shook his head, lips trembling.

 

“Explode?” Sam said, and Yann nodded.

 

“It’s just me and Mamma in the house—w-what if one night I just—what if it catches up with me? I could kill her – I _would_ kill her.” His voice wavered. “I could kill anyone. Someone at work, a stranger, it doesn’t matter to me, so, if you know anything, anything at all, I would really appreciate it.”

 

“The problem is,” Sam said softly and slowly, meeting Dean’s eyes, “we’ve never heard of this happening before.”

 

Yann wiped his face with the backs of his hands, exhaling, his cheeks shiny and pink when he finally moved his fingers aside. He nodded again, and his throat bobbed. Dean watched his eyes pan across the table and land on the gun.

 

“That’s alright,” he whispered, his voice nasal and rough. His blue eyes returned to Dean and he gave a watery grimace, eyes red-rimmed. “Y-you can make it look like an accident, right?”

 

Dean sighed heavily, pushing his hair back and scratching at his neck, shaking his head.

 

Yann kept talking, wringing his spidery fingers together frantically, a sharp contrast to the smooth cadence of his voice. “If you make it look like an accident, maybe Mamma can get some money – if she can get some money out of it she can at least keep the house a little longer before they put her in a home –”

 

“ _Kid,_ ” Dean said loudly, cutting him off. Yann shrank back in his chair, hands gripping the edges of the seat, face on the brink of a meltdown. Dean actively gentled his tone as much as he could. “Nobody is making anything look like an accident yet, okay? We—” He shook his head and made a small frustrated sound, turning to his brother. “Sam?”

 

“We haven’t had a chance to look anything up or call anyone yet, so what Dean’s saying, I think, is that we probably shouldn’t jump to any conclusions until we’ve considered everything,” Sam paused, staring at Yann’s face.

 

He didn’t say anything, merely putting his hands back over his face and tipping forward a fraction, his shoulders shaking. It was the terrible kind of crying that didn’t make any sound – just the violent jerk of his sharp shoulder blades through his shirt and the heaving gasps of his breathing. Cas looked at Yann and then at Dean, conflicted. The green eyes were wearing thin of patience, but they weren’t threatening.

 

“Come on, pull it together,” Dean grunted, and Yann turned his face into his sleeve to mop at his tears, his sobs stuttering to hiccups and eventually stopping all together.

 

“S-sorry,” he said, and Dean rubbed his eyes.

 

“Don’t mention it.”

 

“Yann, do you think it would be alright if you could take us back up to St. Cloud? Show us the place you stay?” Sam had moved a little closer now, and the teenager sniffled, rubbing his nose with his palm.

 

“Yes. It’s right off the interstate.”

 

“Okay. I have a few other questions for you, is that alright?”

 

“Yes, that’s fine…”

 

They began to talk in low voices; it left Dean to get up, aimless, and lean against the partitioning wall of the room, still rubbing his face, lost in the action.

 

Cas let his eyes wander over Dean’s form, flicking from top to bottom as they were wont to do, tracing the lines of his shoulders and the broad sweep of his chest. Dean sagged under the weight of the day; a few pieces of his mussed hair drooped over his forehead and he kept rolling his neck back and forth in an unconscious way.

 

The tendril of nervous something slithered against his insides; he suddenly wasn’t so tired anymore, watching Dean. Not tired enough to be useless, at least. He pushed off of the dinette chair, ignoring the twinge of pain in his knee, and Dean looked blearily at him over his fingers. Cas managed a small smile, rocking onto his heel to steady himself, straightening the loose shirt over his stomach.

 

“Sam?” he said, half-over his shoulder.

 

“Yeah?” Sam sat back, waiting for Cas’ response. The angel glanced at Dean and then back to his younger brother.

 

“I think we should call it a night,” he said gently, noting how Yann and Sam seemed to be visibly relieved at the prospect of an official end to the proceedings. “You can finish talking about it all tomorrow, can’t you?” Cas smiled awkwardly at Yann, unsure of how to act. “We just had a job, and it’s been a long day.”

 

“Thanks, Cas, tell him how we just killed a freak like him,” Dean grumbled, and Cas stood there, unaffected by the jab.“No offense,” Dean added, dipping his head at Yann.

 

“None taken,” the werewolf replied with a cough.

 

 

* * *

 

Sam decked out the window-seat, cramped and awkward as it was, with a blanket and some spare pillows for Yann, after he called home to tell his mother he was staying with friends. The lie tripped off his tongue so obviously that Sam was surprised she bought it at all.

 

Yann sat awkwardly there against the dark glass and the beige drapes, watching them go about their business warily. After a thousand anxious looks from him, Dean had agreed to lock all the firearms in the car, and had promised at least twice not to try and kill Yann in his sleep. Sam had gone in to take a shower; now Dean sat on the far bed with Cas; one jean leg was rolled up past the angel's knee, and he was examining the swollen torn muscle of his knee.

 

“Feels fine, really,” Cas murmured, watching Dean's hands press expertly here and there, over his patella, prodding at the tendons, calloused fingers sweeping firmly and gently over the wounded area. “I'll be in running shape in a few days, I think.”

 

“Just be careful with it, yeah? Don't want you out of commission.” Dean picked up the rolled Ace bandage from the comforter and lifted Cas' leg over his own to bind it back up, efficiently, gently. He felt Yann staring from across the room but couldn't be bothered to comment on it.

 

Without much thought for their nervous guest, Dean and Cas undressed for bed, turning their backs to him, and when Sam came out of the shower there was a muted discussion as to who Cas was to share a bed with that night; eventually they settled on Dean, and crawled into their respective beds, too exhausted to even say a proper goodnight.

 

Sam clicked out the lights and the room went black.

 

In the far bed, Dean turned his back on Cas and curled up in the way he always did, nearly fetal, and Cas could tell by the rhythm of his breathing that he fell asleep almost instantly. Cas, however, was distracted, though his mind had glanced back into the drifting dreamlike haze of earlier that evening—he watched Yann struggling with the blankets on the window-seat, and Sam tossing and turning the way he always did before he settled on a sleeping position, and, closest to him, the silhouette of Dean's body in the dark, the hill and valley of his shoulder and side.

 

The one rule, when sharing Dean's bed, was _no cuddling, man,_ and with it came the unspoken addendum of _no touch_. Increasingly these days Cas found himself wanting to break that addition, if just to smooth down Dean's T-shirt, or the lines of his face. It was a peculiar itch in his fingers, a very small need. He quashed it as best he could, and turned his body to the wall, stretching out his injured leg as much as possible, tangling his fingers together under the covers.

 

Before he drifted off, he became aware of a twinge in the room, something hovering, he felt. Something about to fall and break, almost, though he couldn't place it, and by the time his mind caught onto it, he was already asleep.

 

 

* * *

 

Their boots crunched on the gravel as they spilled out of the Impala, slamming the doors behind them.

 

Yann hustled up the front steps of the cabin – if you could even justify calling it that. It was no more than a shack nestled in the middle of nowhere, a few hundred feet from a small fishing lake. Pulling a key from his pocket, the teenager unlocked the door and hurried inside, leaving it open for the others to follow. Dean watched Cas hesitate at the bottom of the stairs, hand gripping the rickety handrail, shaking it to test it. The rotten wood squeaked back at him, the rusted holdings at the bottom well on their way to disintegration.

 

“Here,” Dean said, coming to stand beside him and offering his arm. “Don’t want you hurting yourself worse. This place is falling apart.” Cas reached out and gripped Dean’s forearm, lifting his good foot. Dean braced himself against the push of Cas’ arm and stepped up with him, grabbing his elbow to steady him when his bad leg came down wrong and he winced.

 

“Easy,” Dean muttered, and Cas gave him a sheepish smile, both of them finally stepping up on the porch. They stood for a moment, still holding onto one another. Cas moved his thumb against the material of Dean’s jacket, and Dean squeezed his elbow once before pulling back, trying not to look at Cas’ mouth or even acknowledge their proximity. He gestured vaguely at the open door, Sam’s shadow looming inside. “After you.”

 

Cas stalled, looking at Dean intently.

 

“What?”

 

Cas was mulling something over as he stared, his expression as earnest as it always was when he saw straight through Dean. Dean shifted uncomfortably, trapped under his eyes.

 

“ _What_ _?_ ”

 

In an instant, Cas caught himself, blinking rapidly, stepping a little in front of Dean and glancing up into the eaves of the porch – it was sunk in the middle from many winters of heavy snow, not yet a problem but well on its way to caving in.

 

“This house is falling apart,” the angel spoke, mirroring Dean’s earlier statement as if he were just realizing it for the first time. Dean’s eyes must have been fooling him – there was something so violently unimpressed on Castiel’s face the more he looked at the peeling paint on the window sills and the dirty glass; the dirty light, the dirty mat in front of the door, the dirty porch and cobwebbed corners. He brushed his pale hand on the door-frame, moon white against the damp wood, swollen from the summer humidity, and Dean watched him pull it back and inspect it, wiping it on his jeans. “He should take better care of it,” Cas said, stepping finally inside.

 

“Alright, Better Homes and Gardens,” Dean mused, watching Castiel’s back melt into the shadows of the front of the house. He was used to the weird profundities Cas spouted, but that had been odd, even for him. Since when did Cas care about the state of other people’s living situations? Especially ones used as safe houses for pubescent werewolves?

 

The floorboards creaked under his feet and he stepped into the cabin, breathing in the stale air and the musty smell of dust and darkness.

 

Yann had flipped on a small light, illuminating the kitchenette half of the shack and a small pine table that looked like a bear had gotten hold of it. Dean peered further around and saw a splintered chair piled near the fireplace – huge claw marks were ground into the floorboards and the walls, the tattered remains of a pair of curtains shredded on the floor, the rod jammed through the back of a dilapidated couch as if someone had thrown it like a javelin.

 

“I know I have coffee somewhere,” Yann said, fumbling in the warped cupboards for chipped china mugs. “Sorry about the mess, n-no one ever comes here.”

 

“Obviously,” Sam marveled, looking around in awe. It was so strange – sort of ridiculous, actually – to see small human accoutrements among the destruction. A stack of paperback novels on the mantle, a hooded jacket on a peg over on the far wall, newspapers scattered on the table and a fork standing in an empty can of Chef Boyardee ravioli on one of the counters.

 

Cas sat down on the battered, ruined couch, looking around the mouldering room. He could smell lake water and snow in the wood, in the coarse fabric underneath him. He watched Dean make his way in a wide arc around the cabin, examining the walls and the ceiling as if looking for some evidence of violence done to something that could bleed.

 

But it seemed Yann had been telling the truth. Though the entire place was trashed to hell and deep gouges marked the floors, there wasn't a speck of blood to be seen, nothing to suggest that anyone had been hurt here, and the dust that lay thick on everything precluded the possibility that he'd cleaned up after himself. There were enormous bolts on the inside of the door, the kind that looked like they were made to take a beating, but would have been impossible to maneuver with clawed hands.

 

The werewolf was making coffee in a rusted-out camping pot on the stove with shaking hands. Outside the world was still waking up, easing its way into early afternoon, and birds were chirruping in the trees.

 

“So you come up here and just lock yourself in?”

 

“Yeah.” Yann came around balancing tin cups of sour coffee in his hands and the crooks of his elbows, and when everyone was looking warily at it in their hands, he leaned against the kitchenette counter, hands fidgeting. “So—this is the place...will you help me?”

 

Dean swiveled one more time to get a look at the place before he settled his gaze on Yann.

 

“I'm still not clear on what you want us to do,” he said. The edge was gone from his voice, and Yann seemed to sense it. He relaxed visibly against the counter.

 

“Just—I don't know. Is it possible to just stop being a werewolf? Is there some kind of test? I just want to be sure that if it's over, if it's really over, then it's over for good. And if it's not, if I'm still—a monster—I figure you can just kill me and be on your way. Save everyone a whole lot of trouble.”

 

“No one's killing anyone,” Sam said.

 

Yann looked at him for a moment and then ducked his head, nodding, but his eyes darted anxiously across the floor in a way that seemed to suggest he'd accepted nothing, or was still holding something back.

 

Unexpectedly, from the couch, Cas said, “Is there something else you want to tell us, Yann?”

 

“Hmm?” Yann looked up but couldn't seem to meet his eyes. “Oh—it's nothing. It's probably nothing.”

 

But all three were looking at him intensely, waiting for the other shoe to drop; now that Cas had said something Dean and Sam could see it clearly on his face, something unsaid in the lines of the boy's mouth.

 

Yann sighed, rubbed hastily at his eyes with his hands.

 

“I've—you're my last option,” he said, refusing to look at any of them. “Like I said, it's been two months. I've had time to look into things, you know? I mean, I guess I'm lucky for being such a— _normal_ monster. There's lots of stuff out there about my kind of thing.”

 

“And?” Dean prompted.

 

“Well, there's nothing out there about _this_ problem. But I did find—I did happen across a lot of weird stuff, you know? Just stuff that caught my interest, when I was looking. So I kept tabs on that to distract myself. Cut up newspapers and things.” Yann scratched absently at his neck. “I mean, you guys are used to a lot of really terrible shit, right?”

 

“Understatement,” Sam muttered under his breath.

 

“I dunno, I thought—I was thinking, last night, about some of the stuff I heard about. Read about. Weird stuff, like I said, but not terrible. That kind of sticks out, you know? So—maybe—”

 

“Hold on,” Dean said, holding out a hand, and Yann's mouth snapped shut. “So you've been following _weird stuff_. For fun. Weird, but not terrible?”

 

“Well, yeah.”

 

“What the hell does that even mean? Or have to do with anything?”

 

“Look, I know the system with your kind of people,” Yann said; his anxiety was giving way to what sounded almost like frustration with the fact that he couldn't seem to put his thoughts into words. “There are things you look for for cases, right? You've got contacts, you've got things that stick out. I thought if I was going to have to ask a hunter for help I'd better start thinking like one. I don't know what you've been paying attention to, but there've been—things, happening all over. Like— _good things_.”

 

“Miracles?” Castiel asked, softly, from the couch.

 

Yann shrugged. “I guess you could call them that. So I thought, maybe this is one of those good things, you know? It's all over the place, why couldn't it happen to something like me?”

 

“When you say _good things,_ ” Sam said, “what do you mean, exactly?”

 

Yann made an exasperated noise and crouched down, opening a cabinet in the counter of the kitchenette. From the dusty dark he pulled out what looked like a high schooler's chemistry binder, stuffed full of newspaper clippings and web printouts.

 

“I told you I've kept track,” he said, cradling it in his arm, opening it against the crook of his elbow. Sam and Dean took steps forward and Cas pulled himself upright again, leaning on his bad leg with a wince. They crowded around Yann as his skeletal fingers danced over the leaves of paper.

 

“Like this— _Iowa Drought Ends Abruptly, Harvest Restored in What Farmers Call a 'Miraculous Occurrence.'”_ He pulled that one out and Sam took it, hazel eyes glancing over the tiny print. “Or this one. _Aurora Borealis at Most Vivid in Recorded History._ Or—this one's nearby. _The Little Orchard that Could—Wisconsin Peach Orchard Flourishes._ That one's weird—see, peaches don't grow well this far north but I guess they're having crazy success—”

 

“Good farming,” Dean grunted. “And pollution. Doesn't that make things in the sky look brighter? Those aren't miracles, they're just coincidences.”

 

“That's not all, though,” Yann babbled, tripping over his words in his haste. He dropped the binder unceremoniously on the counter; Sam and Cas turned to look through it. “I've been listening to the news on your side of the world, too. You know wendigos? Hasn't been a single reported case of one in almost a _year_. There's a demon specialist in Nebraska, everyone's talking about him, how he's saying demons are coming to _him._ Begging to be exorcised.”

 

Slowly, all three of them turned to stare at him. That had definitely caught their attention.

 

Yann nodded, warming to his subject. “And no one's had a case on any kind of water spirit for longer than anyone can remember. Drowned ghosts, kelpies, selkies, merfolk, nothing at all. That entire—species, or whatever, they've all gone quiet.”

 

“And—”

 

“And? Doesn't that sound like a lot of good things? Even you guys—I bet you've been hard-pressed to find cases lately, huh?”

 

Sam looked at Dean, who looked at Cas; they looked at one another and then back at Yann.

 

“Well,” Cas said, reluctantly, “they don't come as easily as they used to anymore.”

 

“Exactly.” Yann snapped up his binder and hugged it to his chest. “Why couldn't it all be—I don't know, connected? Miracles. Or whatever. Maybe—maybe that's what's wrong with me. Or. Right with me. You know.”

 

The three others lapsed into silence save for the faint rasping sound of Dean rubbing his lower jaw. Yann bit the inside of his cheek and squeezed his arms around the folder.

 

“It’s been two cycles and I haven’t turned,” he said, rubbing his fingers up and down the spine. “I came up here, and I sat there and nothing happened. Not a hair out of place.” He laughed suddenly, touching his forehead in disbelief. “I, uh. I did a crossword and finished a book and thought about what to get my mom for her birthday, and I thought, ‘why should I bother with a gift if I’m normal?’ If I can give her a normal son again…” His sentence trailed off and he shrugged.

 

“Lofty dreams,” Dean muttered, and much to their surprise, Yann grinned, chuckling again.

 

“I know, right? It’s insane.”

 

“It doesn’t _happen_ ,” Dean said more seriously. “Ever. People don’t just _stop_ being werewolves.”

 

“Dean,” Sam sighed, and Dean rolled his eyes.

 

“Come on, Sam, are you seriously believing this? It’s all coincidence! Even this is coincidence, and a few months from now we’ll be back here cleaning up his mother’s body.”

 

“Dean!” Sam barked. “He’s just a kid!”

 

Yann flinched, tucking his chin to his chest, his face back to its former stricken white, the flush of excitement gone.

 

“That doesn’t matter.”

 

“It _does_ matter!” Sam protested. “He’s not a monster right now, and we don’t kill things that aren’t monsters!”

 

Dean set his jaw and looked away. Sam let his arms swing at his sides, his face apologetic when he found Yann’s eyes.

 

“You’re not a monster. At least, for the moment – and even if you were a werewolf, it’s debatable.”

 

Dean growled out something unintelligible, and Sam ignored it, voice still soft.

 

“The only thing we can do right now is test to see if you are or not. We can try silver on you and see what happens.”

 

Yann’s face was petrified, but he managed to nod his head. There was no need to go into detail. Sam knew they were both well versed in the knowledge.

 

“Yeah,” he whispered.

 

“But,” Sam continued, giving Dean a sideways glance, “we'll only do it if you _want_ us to.”

 

“Sammy!” Dean barked, finger pointing accusingly in Yann’s direction. “That is out of line! He doesn’t get a say in this!”  
  
“Yes, he does!” Sam insisted. “He does, Dean. What would you do? What if Mom was in the same situation? You wouldn’t abandon her. You’d do exactly what he’s doing!”

 

“Don’t bring her into this, Sam, it’s completely different!”

 

“You’d be doing your best to get through it, and that’s all he’s doing, Dean. He’s just a kid, and he loves his mom, and I’m not going to let you take the last bit of control he has.”

 

Dean grit his teeth together. Sam’s voice lowered.

 

“If you have to, Dean, prioritize it, because I don’t know about you, but I’m way more concerned with the filing cabinet of weirder shit that he’s holding. That kind of thing doesn’t just _happen_ either, and there’s a lot more of it. That last one? About the peach orchard? That article came out three days ago and judging by the amount of evidence he’s got, whatever is happening has got a hell of a lot of momentum behind it, and that could be good _or_ bad, and I don't think we want to sit on that and do nothing.”

 

Dean couldn’t argue with the logic, and he knew Sam was right, as much as he despised admitting it.

 

“ _Fine_ ,” he bit out. “But if I hear one whisper of something happening because you were too pansy to take care of it, it’s on you, and I’m not going to wait for him to decide.” He wheeled on Yann, eyes dark. “Listen up, I don’t usually _do_ this, but it’s obvious there’s some other shit going down. Shit, as my brother so kindly pointed out, that is way more important to me than some freak kid. So for now you get to slide, but if I catch a word of something up here, you won’t get a choice.”

 

“I understand,” Yann whispered. “I understand. I’m not – I understand.”

 

“Good,” Dean said harshly, and out of habit he stared at Cas, still standing quietly by, watching and listening. “Anything to add? At all?”

 

Cas matched his eyes.

 

“Sam’s right, Dean. I find the matter of these—miracles far more urgent,” Cas replied, voice even. “Especially with the added knowledge of how recent the last one was.”

 

“Well, I’m so glad everyone’s happy. So okay. We go after this big pile of happy-go-lucky fucked-up, well, it’s not going to start here. We gotta call Bobby, and that means getting somewhere with service.”

 

“Dean,” Cas said softly, and Dean threw up his hands, barging out of the cabin.

 

“He’s just a little wound up,” Sam said tiredly, but Yann was still shaking. “He just really doesn’t like things to be…ambiguous.”

 

“I understand,” Yann stammered. “I understand him perfectly. It’s terrible to have to be someone you don’t want to be.”

 

Cas pardoned himself, following Dean out into the yard. The small shack was suddenly suffocating.

 

 

* * *

 

There was a dock that stood out over the tiny fishing lake—more of a pond, really, now that Dean was closer. The old wood looked about as stable as the cabin, which wasn't saying much in its favor. He paused where it met the damp grass and came to a stop, rubbing at his eyes.

 

There was the sound of weeds rustling and Cas' voice said, “You're alright?”

 

Dean turned, forced up something like a smile. “Yeah.” Cas came to stand beside him, hands in his pockets, injured leg propped out awkwardly. They looked out over the dull pond water; skating beetles blipped across the surface. “Yeah, it's just—a weird situation, you know?”

 

“Mmm.” Cas glanced at him, the strong line of his jaw, the sweep of his jugular. “Intriguing, though. You have to admit.”

 

“I guess.”

 

“I never expected to hear the word _miracle_ in a serious context ever again, to be honest.”

 

“You think it's—what? Do you think it's angels?”

 

Cas frowned, chin pulling down. He watched a beetle dart over the surface of the shallows, leaving ripples in its wake. “You know angels, Dean. Does this sound like angels to you?”

 

“Not really, no.”

 

“There's your answer.”

 

Silence of a sort fell, broken by the wind in the leaves and the sound of the cabin door opening. They both glanced over their shoulders; Sam and Yann were leaving the cabin, talking in low voices, and Sam gestured in their direction to come back to the car soon.

 

“I guess we're done here.”

 

“We'll test him when we get back to Winona,” Cas said, quietly. “And then we'll figure out what to do next.”

 

“This sounds like some heavy shit, Cas,” Dean said, on the end of a breath, and finally Cas heard how stressed he actually was. “Bigger than some kid out of Teen Wolf. And I thought maybe things were quieting down for good—”

 

“Well...if it is something big, we'll handle it. One step at a time, the way you always do. Right?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Sam's voice trailed over the yard. “Come on, guys, let's hit the road!”

 

Dean sighed, and turned to go back to the Impala. Cas caught his wrist as they started back, and squeezed it, once, as if in reassurance.

 

 

* * *

 

Yann held out his arm, his whole body caught in a tremble. Sam held his shoulder in a warm clasp, squeezing.

 

“Try to relax, that way I can make a clean cut.”

 

“Knives, you know, and blood—” Yann said thinly, a whimper climbing out of his throat, eyes squinting closed when Sam steadied the knife in his hand. Without another warning, Sam pulled Yann's arm taut and slid the knife over his forearm, tearing a gasp out of the teenager's throat.

 

They waited, Dean and Cas staring, but they seemed to already know.

 

“Shit, get me a towel,” Sam said. Dean tossed him one from his bag, and Yann stayed stone still, even as Sam pressed the cloth against the wound. Out of nowhere he gasped again, eyes flying open.

 

“—I’m not dead!” he cried, looking at Sam, and Sam smiled hesitantly at him.

 

“No…you’re not.”

 

Sam looked at Dean.

 

“I have no clue,” Dean said in disbelief, throwing up his hands.

 

Yann quickly began using his own hand to apply pressure, a deep scarlet blush rising up his neck and his face, his eyes huge.

 

“How do you feel?” Cas asked, softly.

 

The teenager raised his head, but his eyes remained glued to his arm.

 

“Huh?”  
  
“How do you feel?”

 

His mouth opened and closed rapidly, and they watched the tears brim and spill down his face all at once. He didn’t manage to say anything for a long time, and when he did, it was proceeded by a laugh from somewhere deep, deep within him.

 

“I feel like a person,” he said. “I feel like – like a person!”

 

Dean’s stomach flipped.

 

“This shit is unreal,” he mumbled, watching the boy tip his head against Sam when his brother brought him closer, an arm around his back.

 

Cas was astounded, watching it all, trying to sort through it in his head.

 

“He's cured,” Cas said, tilting his head toward Dean. “It _is_ a miracle.”

 

And he said that word as if it were totally foreign, a precious object. He stared at Yann as if he were something long-lost and strange.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I told you, idjit, _I’m workin’ on it._ ”

 

“Bobby, I just saw a werewolf withstand a silver knife. You’re gonna have to give me something.”

 

The mood in the motel room had lightened considerably in the hours after Yann had passed the test; there was a glow to his face that Dean could only classify as joy. Sam had gone out and come back with Chinese takeout and now he and Yann and Cas were sitting at the dinette, picking in their boxes with their chopsticks; he was vaguely aware of Sam trying to teach Cas how to use them. Dean was on the opposite end of the room, legs crossed on the bed, phone tucked into his shoulder.

 

“Listen, I dunno about _that,_ ” Bobby said. Dean could hear the loud noises of books being closed and slammed and moved on the other end. “But it looks like what the kid said is legit. I don't know how anybody missed all this crap.”

 

“Bad crap or good crap?”

 

“On the surface? Good, I imagine.”

 

“Okay, yeah, and since when is any crap we come across ever _good_?”

 

“Well, what more d'you want? I'm hardly scratchin' the surface and even I can tell you there ain't nothin' negative about any of this.”

 

Dean sighed, rolled his shoulders; through the partition he could see Yann helping Cas arrange the chopsticks in his fingers. Cas was staring studiously at them, nodding and blinking.

 

“Come on, Bobby, there has to be something.”

 

“Why's that?”

 

“Because there's _always something_. Good things just don't happen like that, hell, _miracles_ just _don't happen_. There's got to be an—ulterior motive, you know, some kind of catch? Something big and bad orchestrating all of this, I don't know, but I don't trust it.”

 

“So good harvests are a sign of Satan's handiwork now, is that it? My God, you're paranoid, boy.”

 

“Okay, but what about this? People don't just up and stop having lycanthropy. The guy in Nebraska? Demons asking to be exorcised? And we've hardly had any good work in months. Bobby, come on, that's just not natural.”

 

“Look, I don't know what to tell you. All I got's a big heap of what look like full-blown miracles that just keep stackin' up and hardly any leads.”

 

“Hardly any, does that mean—you've got at least some?”

 

“I dunno how useful it'll be, but—”

 

“Anything is useful if it'll let us figure out what's going on.”

 

“Well, let me get a little more intel on it, then. For now, just stay put where you are, keep an eye on things, let me know if anything comes up. I'll call you when I got somethin' worth telling.”

 

“Okay.” Dean leaned forward, bending his leg, rubbing at his face with one hand. “Okay, Bobby, thanks.”

 

There was a dull click on the other end as Bobby hung up, and Dean slowly flipped his phone shut and pinched the bridge of his nose.

 

Cas leaned around the partition unexpectedly, favoring his good leg, and cast Dean a small smile when Dean looked up.

 

“Come eat,” Cas said. “Your food is getting cold.”

 

 

* * *

 

Sam drove Yann home that night after the boy gave them his number. “Just in case,” he'd said. “The full moon's in a few nights. Give me a call when it's out, yeah? And if I don't answer, assume we were wrong.”

 

Sam hadn't liked that idea, but they had done as he was obliged. _Yann Olsson_ sat snugly at the bottom of their contacts lists.

 

Yann lived on the other side of Winona, past even the furthest suburbs, and Sam was gone for the better part of an hour.

 

In the gentle silence of the motel room, Dean and Cas went about their nightly routine—checking Cas' injury, Dean showering, collapsing on the bed to watch grainy sitcoms while Cas took his own shower. When Cas was done, he came out in his towel and closed the drapes, ducking behind the partition's wavy glass to get dressed.

 

Dean felt only slightly self-conscious about glancing at him through the warped, muffled half-wall, the flesh-colored blur of his body while he slipped into boxers and a T-shirt. Dean was continually struck with how thin he was, no matter how much he ate. His ribs always showed.

 

A few months ago there had been a Conversation. It rested with a capital C in Dean's memory—not because it had been altogether profound or eloquent but because it had been so jarred and uncertain. He couldn't remember the exact circumstances but he could remember the exchange perfectly: Cas, quietly and uneasily telling Dean the great secret, and Dean, quietly and uneasily responding with his own. That there were feelings between them that neither of them entirely understood. Since then there had been touch, and glances, but nothing solid, nothing tangible. Not yet.

 

It was an unsteady kind of relationship they had these days, Dean Winchester and his angel.

 

He turned his face back to the television as Cas came around the partition again, left knee still bound in his bandage. Another night sleeping with Dean, they'd decided, and so he sat down on the bed next to him and lifted his leg up onto the comforter. It was no secret he preferred sleeping in Dean's bed—he claimed it was because Sam thrashed, and Dean didn't, but they both knew in the backs of their brains that wasn't quite the whole truth.

 

“How's it feel?” Dean asked, swallowing, trying to smudge out the shape of Cas' body behind the partition from his mind. He gestured to Cas' leg and Cas shifted it, frowning.

 

“Not too bad,” he said. He nodded towards the television. “What's, uh—what's on?”

 

“ _Full House_ ,” Dean said, shuffling further down the bed until his shoulders were propping up his head. He crossed his arms and sighed.

 

Cas tangled his hands together in his lap and tried to settle in. He glanced at Dean, the long line of his body, the fold of his arms over his chest and his Adam's apple working in his throat. He wanted very much to lean against him, rest his head on his shoulder, maybe, but he knew Dean would shrug him off even though Sam wasn't there. It frustrated him, being this _between,_ not knowing what was acceptable. He'd been learning through trial and error—touching Dean's wrists, his arms, was fine; looking at him, admiring him, was fine. But there were other things Cas wished he could do, things he wished he could say, things he wasn't sure about.

 

He settled for moving a little closer to Dean on the bed, close enough to feel the heat of Dean's body against his own.

 

 

* * *

 

They were forced out of the motel before noon the next day; by some gravity they ended up back at the diner. Dean frowned into his coffee, unsure if his headache was from too much caffeine or not enough.

 

“So,” Sam said sleepily, mopping his egg up with a piece of toast. “Plan?”

 

“Wait for Bobby to call about whatever it is and then we go take care of business,” Dean grumbled back, stealing a look at Cas’ plate – he was picking the chocolate chips out of his pancakes and eating them separately, absorbed in the task. Dean fought the urge to shake his head at it, taking another drink of coffee instead.

 

“I meant in the meantime,” Sam said, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand. Dean shrugged and watched Cas suck a little bit of chocolate from the prongs of his fork and then set it down. He picked up a piece of bacon and tore it into a smaller piece; everything was always made bite sized when Cas ate, except for burgers, which he ate like Dean did. Dean was sure there wasn’t a coincidence in that.

 

“I’d like to see the river,” Cas said, looking up only to immediately meet Dean’s eyes. Dean felt embarrassed for staring, but Cas didn’t seem bothered, nibbling another section of his bacon. “If we have time.”

 

“Sure,” Dean said, taking the next second to clear his throat.

 

Sam crunched his toast thoughtfully, nodding along. “I want to look through that binder again,” he said, mouth full. He swallowed, and tapped a few crumbs off of the toast and onto his plate before taking another bite. “See if there are any more that are closer, like that one in Wisconsin.”

 

“‘Course,” Dean agreed, taking yet another drink and wondering if they had aspirin or not. His mind wandered while Cas and Sam finished their food. He’d inhaled his own, as usual, and now it sat heavy in his stomach. He threw his used napkin onto his empty plate. The crushed paper resembled the kicked-off covers of a motel bed.

 

The diner faded to background noise as he lapsed into thought. That morning he'd woken up only to realize that he had decided to be a hot sleeper and push the sheets to the foot of the mattress.

 

There was also the slightly terrifying moment of waking up to see that he had thrown his arm over Cas’ back, and his face was buried in his shoulder. He didn’t know if Cas had woken up as he extracted himself, but that wasn’t what disturbed him so much. Maybe it would have been a bit better if Cas _had_ woken up – maybe it would have motivated him to move more quickly. In those first few drowsy seconds he hadn’t registered everything completely. There had just been the soft background hum of the air conditioner and the shuddering rattle of the mini fridge under the counter and the sliver of light wavering on the floor when the curtains swayed. And the press of Cas’ shoulder into his cheek, the way he could feel the soft swell of his back when he breathed.

 

He had lain there for a second, content to remain as he was, until the fog of sleep had cleared and some muscle in Cas’ back had twitched, and he'd realized, and quickly pulled his arm off and rolled over. He'd felt stunned for some reason – stunned because of how pleasant it was to wake up like that, or that he had let it happen _again,_ or something else, he didn’t know. He didn’t like the lack of control sleep brought, the way his body sought out Cas on its own. He didn’t like how easy it felt, because easy meant letting your guard down.

 

Easy affection could disarm you, if you let it.

 

“Dean?”

 

Dean broke from his reverie and blinked.

 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m ready,” he muttered, standing, watching Sam put a few bills on the table, his turn to pick up the tip. He knew Cas’ eyes were following him as he ambled towards the front of the diner for what he hoped was the last time, and he was compelled to wait, holding the door open for Cas as he caught up. Cas smiled at him.

 

“Thank you.”

 

Dean felt himself tip towards getting lost in the openness of Cas’ face when he smiled quietly at Dean in passing, but then he had gone by, and Sam’s back filled his view, and Dean was left standing, still holding the door, and still some kind of hungry.

 

* * *

 

 

It was well into the end of May; children and their parents lingered on the mulched playground near the parking lot, and a small coup of doves in a screen-and-wood dovecote cooed down on the little cement path to the water, flapping their wings and bathing in the shallow metal trays in the early morning sunlight.

 

Sam pointed out a little cafe-on-wheels on the other end of the park and then said he was going to take a jog, hadn't had a proper one in months; when he'd gone off, Dean went to the mesh screen and peered in at the doves with Cas, hands in his pockets. Some nodded sleepily on their perches, necks pulled inwards, feathers fluffed up in rest, and others fluttered around, wings beating the air in their frenzied little flights from artificial branch to branch. One struck up a mournful song, low and sweet, and a few joined in, waking the ones with their wings over their faces. Here and there pairs and trios nestled against each other, beady eyes winking at the two men watching them, their companions pecking seed from the dirt bottom.

 

“Cute,” Dean said, and Cas hummed in agreement, his arm brushing against Dean’s when he moved slightly. Cas looked past the doves, through the other side of their enclosure to the water; he could barely see the current, the water shimmering past, rolling steadily along. He didn’t think as he took Dean’s elbow and tugged, stepping back from the aviary back towards the path that wound down towards the docks.

 

“This is so weird,” Dean said under his breath as they went, crossing the grass to hop up onto the dock steps, the warped dark wood thick and blistered with water.

 

“What is?”

 

“This.” Dean gestured to the park, the dovecote, the water. To Cas. “Not having anything to do, you know? Acting like normal people. Going to the park, for Christ's sake.” He laughed, an uncomfortable little sound.

 

“It's a nice change of pace,” Cas said, tugging on Dean's shirt sleeve, rolled up against his elbow. He felt fidgety, restless, for whatever reason inclined to touch Dean whenever he could get the chance. “We might as well enjoy it.”

 

“Mm.”

 

“Would you rather be here investigating a horrific death or having a little time to relax?” Cas leaned on Dean's arm to get up the steps, more out of habit than pain at this point.

 

“Touché.”

 

Together they walked down to the end of the dock, over the sounds of water breaking on the pillars. The wood creaked and wobbled under their feet and the smell of the river was so large and swelling that it almost washed like wind against their faces.

 

“So.” Dean stuck his hands in his pockets, looking out over the expanse of the water. “What's so great about the river?”

 

“God's handiwork,” Cas said simply. “And it reminds me of home.”

 

“Heaven?”

 

“Well. Yours was a road. Not much different from a river, really.”

 

There was, Dean had to admit, a peace to this. Standing out over the water with his best friend, just admiring the view—the rolling green water, the bluffs across the way, trees still coming into their summer clothes; the pale strips of rock, the sounds of children and footpath-walkers and dogs trailing behind their backs. He could almost ignore the weight of the phone in his pocket waiting for Bobby to call back, or the memory of Yann's blood on the silver knife the night before still lingering in his mind. It felt like the first time in his life that he'd had this opportunity, to take a day off. Perhaps it was.

 

Beside him, shifting his body from one leg to another, Cas looked down and then up again, squinting against the warm wind.

 

“What are we doing, Dean?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Cas sighed; his mouth pulled down. “Us,” he said, glancing at Dean. “What are we doing?”

 

Dean looked away from him, into the water lapping at the pylons of the dock. He wondered absently if there were minnows in the shallows, back a ways.

 

“I suppose I'm just confused,” Cas added, then. He shrugged his shoulders back. “I'm not sure how—how we're getting on. What's alright to do and not do.”

 

“With each other.”

 

“Yes.”

 

Out of the corner of his eye Dean looked at him—his lean body under Dean's clothes, and Sam's clothes. They'd consigned the old raggedy trench coat to the trunk for the warm months weeks ago and now Cas wore what the brothers had to spare, worn-out jeans and button-downs, soft T-shirts, jackets. Dean's shirt, today, dark red plaid, and Sam's jeans, too long and paler blue even than Cas' eyes. They suited him, Dean thought. They suited his form and his shape.

 

“Yeah,” Dean said softly, squinting up at the empty sky. “I'm still trying to figure that out, too.”

 

They stood there a while longer without saying anything. To Dean's surprise no pall fell on their good moods despite the awkward conversation, the awkward situation.

 

He wasn't used to talking about strange things like this, like their odd unsteady affection, without feeling strange himself.

 

Dean's cell buzzed in his pocket and he fished it out, expecting Bobby's number on the screen, but instead he saw a text from Sam.

 

“Wants to meet us at that cafe-on-wheels thing,” he said, in answer to Cas' curious tilt of the head. “You hungry?”

 

“Not particularly,” Cas said. “But we might as well.”

 

They turned to leave the dock, the warm breeze soothing and pressing against their skin, and Cas self-consciously slipped his arm into Dean's—carefully, smoothly, and to his surprise and happiness Dean only pulled away a very little bit—the better to find Cas' fingers, and lace his own between them.

 

 

* * *

 

Sam spread the binder on the hood of the Impala, mixing the granola and blueberries down into the yogurt he’d bought. Between spoonfuls he turned pages, trying to muddle the facts from the wordy and often unbelievable articles.

 

“Get this,” he said loudly, not bothering to lift his head, shoveling another hefty amount of parfait into his mouth. Dean made some sound from inside the car, his long leg moving slightly where it was slung out of the open door, his head tilted back against the back seat, sunglasses on. Cas was a few feet away, watching sparrows graze in the weeds by the parking lot, chirping contentedly. He heard Sam speak and turned back, ambling to his side.

 

“So, this peach orchard, it’s actually been running for years. Like—” He skimmed the article again—“more than a hundred years. It’s owned by the Francis family, and apparently they’ve been experiencing success ever since they put the orchard down in the early 1800s, and it didn’t take, and then, all of a sudden, it just erupted in the 1840s, and they’ve been doing pretty well ever since. That in itself—peaches don't grow this far north. Not that well.”

 

“So, they grow peaches,” Dean grumbled. “Big freakin’ deal.”

 

“Well, this year they pulled in a record harvest. We’re talking _record_. Like, enough to grab the attention of the Department of Agriculture. They sent an agent in to test the soil and didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.”

 

“Curious,” Cas said, and Sam laughed at the choice of word.

 

“Yeah, and curiouser,” he joked, flipping to the article behind the one he had been looking at.

 

Cas peered around him, glancing at the headline. “Well, regardless of the cause, they seem pleased about it,” he said. “‘ _Greenacre is planning to extend the peach festival an extra week due to surplus fruit. Local and surrounding communities are encouraged to participate in the celebration.'_ It looks like a lot of fun.”

 

“We aren’t here for fun,” Dean said, as if to remind them. He pushed up his sunglasses to glance at the screen of his phone and check if Bobby had called while he was dozing. Sam rolled his eyes. Cas licked his thumb, turning the page, continuing to read.

 

“I was merely being objective,” he said. “For us it will be a good chance to talk to the owner and his family without attracting suspicion. We can just act as more press…” Cas’ words trailed off and he pushed the binder towards Sam once more. Dean watched from the back seat as the angel pushed his hands into the pockets of what used to be Sam's jeans, lost in thought.

 

Dean was so absorbed in watching that when his phone _did_ vibrate to life he hardly noticed it. On the second buzz he jumped, answering it and climbing out of the car so he could stand closer to the others. Sam put down his yogurt and stared at him expectantly and Cas took his hands out of his pockets, waiting.

 

“Well,” Bobby sighed on the other end, “I’ve dug to the bottom of it, and I’ll tell you, it ain’t much to go on.”

 

“But it’s _something_ ,” Dean insisted, flicking his eyes from his brother and Cas to the ground.

 

“It’s something, alright,” Bobby answered, in a slightly confounded voice. There was a pause and Dean bristled, ready to catch the cinder block the world was no doubt about to drop on them. “Way back when, late 1840s or so, the Mississippi got infected by this—fad religion.”

 

“Bobby, what the hell does that have to do with anything?”

 

“Don’t sass me boy, the history is important!” Bobby snapped, and Dean pulled a face. “It never got very widespread, sort of petered out the further south it went, as far as I can tell. But as I was sayin’, there was this old preacher – Amos Porter – he goes up and down the Mississippi crowing on about this 'New Faith,' said it was going to turn the world over—”

 

“Here it comes,” Dean interrupted.

 

“You don’t even know what I’m gonna say,” Bobby said gruffly. “Now, listen to me, because you’re not going to believe it, but there’s not a lick of hellfire or brimstone in this. Not one hair of it. It’s nothing but the ‘fruit of the vine’ and ‘good will to men;' harvests, plants blooming out of season, neighbors shaking hands, the whole works. Which to me sounds a lot like what you boys are lookin' at.”

 

Cas watched Dean’s face. If the situation didn’t call for such a somber attitude, he might have laughed. Dean’s expression was caught in some kind of in-between state. He appeared unsure of how to react to whatever Bobby was telling him, the phone pressed against his ear, his mouth slightly open in surprise.

 

“Now, the only way we know about any of this is old primary works from all up and down the river. But there was this book he had. Some old book he’d come across in his travels and he would read from it and people would feel all warm and fuzzy inside and call themselves transformed, or what-not. Least that's the impression I'm gettin'.”

 

“Let me guess, it was lost,” Dean said, and Bobby huffed.

 

“Damn straight. He died in a steamboat crash while he was goin' down preachin' the word, and they found his body, but the book was never recovered. All I found were a bunch of wild goose chases on who might have stolen it from him – the book never left his side. He slept with the damn thing. Called himself the new prophet of the ages to come.”

 

Dean’s brow furrowed and he rubbed his forehead.

 

“Okay—and what makes you think this book has anything to do with this? I mean, what if it's just coincidence?”

 

“Remember those primary works I mentioned? I found a few things, scattered all up and down—stuff from hunters. I guess wherever this guy went and preached his New Gospel or whatever, there was a pattern. Every-goddamn-thing paranormal high-tailed it out of there for at least two months in his wake. Like nothin' nobody'd ever seen. Not surprised they made note of it. 'Course, it all went back to normal after he died, but it happened. People noticed. Our kind of people.”

  
“So you’re telling me the only real lead we have is a book that may or may not still exist, and may or may not have fuck-all to do with this.”

 

“I’m telling you that if you want to figure out what’s going on you’re going to have to do a lot of the footwork yourself. Amos Porter’s body and all the rest of his shit was in one piece – fool died of smoke inhalation when the fire broke out on his deck of the ship, but the water put it out before it could destroy his room. Wherever that book is, it’s intact, but I can’t tell you where it is or if it can even be found. I got a sinkin’ suspicion that this all ain’t some coincidence, though. I've been callin' people up, asking around. You look up and down that river all you’ll find are a bunch of happy folks. Not a whisper of trouble in months from our side of the veil or the other. It's taken a while, but people are starting to notice it.”

 

“And you think Amos Porter’s religion is the reason?”

 

“It’s the only explanation I can find. There isn’t anything else heralding ‘an eternal spring.'”

 

“So what are we going to do? Just wander and hope we come across something? That sounds like a grand waste of my time, Bobby.”

 

“You’re at the top mouth of the Mississippi and you got a hell of a lot of ground to cover. That orchard you were telling me about is the tip of the iceberg. Things happening from where you are to the Gulf – all you gotta do is put your hand on the map and pick. Somebody is bound to know something somewhere. Try for the small towns – the boonies. They hold on to history better. Somebody’s granddaddy knows something. That’s what I think. If you have a hell’s chance of getting ahead of whatever’s happening, it’s in that book, and if you want to find that book you’re going to have to put on a face and talk to people. It’s all word of mouth in that part of the country.”

 

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

 

“It’s either that or sitting around waiting for a call to come in, and you know as well as I do that could take a while. Everything’s quiet. I have nothing else to tell you,” Bobby said shortly, and Dean could tell he was just as exasperated by the whole thing. “It’s the craziest thing I’ve heard in a while. Like all of a sudden things just flipped.”

 

“What do you think it is?” Dean asked, hoping for something easier to follow.

 

“I don’t know, kid. I don’t know what to make of it, but it’s big. It’s bigger than what it looks like on the surface – all these little things are clicking together to make one big something, and we happen to be in the business of big somethings.”

 

Dean looked at Sam and Castiel's expectant faces and turned to the side, lowering his voice.

 

“Could it be bad?”

 

“Hell, boy, everything _could_ be bad. Just figure out what's going on before it has the chance to turn sour.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

They found slightly nicer accommodation for the night; the motel of the last few days had been skeevy even by the Winchesters' standards, booked more out of necessity than anything else. That night they parked the Impala in front of Room 38 at a Motel 6 after an uneventful afternoon; the sun was setting bright and golden over the bluffs, and though Dean would never admit it, all three of them had an easy lope to their walks that only came from relaxation. They needed days like this, no matter how much they denied it to themselves.

 

They were getting settled when Sam's phone rang, and when he picked it up he frowned at the number.

 

“Who is it?” Dean asked from across the room. Cas straightened up in his seat on the far bed.

 

“It's Yann,” Sam said, sounded confused, and he flipped the phone open. “Hello?”

 

There was a pause in which Dean and Castiel heard the low muffled sound of Yann talking, and Sam's face contorted into a few different shades of bewildered before he spoke again.

 

“Uh—are you sure?”

 

Dean and Cas exchanged glances.

 

“Well—if—if you really want us to, I guess—yeah. Sure. Okay. Bye—yeah, bye.”

 

He closed the phone and blinked a few times.

 

“What did he want?” Dean asked.

 

“To—invite us to dinner,” Sam said, staring at the phone in his hand.

 

 

* * *

 

Yann Olsson and his mother lived in a huge, rambling clapboard house past the farthest-flung suburb of Winona, tucked up along the rise of a bluff among the towering trees. Altogether it looked like a poor house, but a kind one—wind-chimes dangled in bunches near the door, floral curtains drifted in the windows, and as they walked up to the door, the window-air-conditioner chugged and puffed with a little domestic hum as if welcoming them.

 

Sam hardly had time to knock on the door before it was opening, and Yann, all his five-feet-nine-inches of bony elbows and pale hair, was grinning up at all of them.

 

“Sorry that was so last-minute,” he said in a sort of hush as he let them in. “I just was trying to think of a way to thank you guys for—you know. And I thought it'd be nice. And I wanted you to meet my mom.”

 

The interior of the house was dark, but not in a way that seemed unfriendly; the sunset light was painting everything in orange rectangles and yellow streaks, and the warm summer breeze that blew in through the open windows ruffled the curtains in soft arcs. It was immaculately clean. Photographs of Yann and a woman in a wheelchair decorated almost every surface, and here and there a lone man, who looked like he might have been the boy's father. Castiel trailed behind the brothers, lagging a bit, taking it all in. It wasn't often they had a chance to be inside the house of living people like this.

 

“Mamma,” he heard Yann say up ahead, “these are—my friends. You know? The ones who helped me out with, um—well, we've been—”

 

“Just happened to meet up in town,” Dean said, smoothly lying as usual, and Cas' attention drifted back to them. “We've been, uh—”

 

“—Trying to get your insurance worked out,” Sam chimed in. “Ma'am. Pro bono, you know.”

 

“Yann's been telling me all about you,” said a woman's voice; Cas finally caught up to them and slipped into what looked like a small dining room, behind Dean.

 

She was small, bone-fragile by the looks of her, sitting in a power wheelchair in a long blue dress with a white collar, and a shawl around her shoulders. She looked like something straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, soft pale hair and bright blue eyes and arthritic hands placed tentatively on the armrests of her chair.

 

Yann was shifting on his feet as if afraid she'd catch wind of the all the lies in the room, but she didn't seem bothered. Cas thought she looked like the kind of woman who'd invite the homeless in for supper at a moment's notice. He could smell food cooking in the kitchen through the hall behind her, and the glass porch doors were open just slightly to let in the breeze. There were already places set for them.

 

 

“I'll check on the food,” Yann said, scratching nervously at his neck, and he vanished into the kitchen.

 

His mother extended her hand to Sam, who shook it and introduced himself. Dean did the same, and then Cas. To him she said, peering up into his face, “Thank you very much for looking after my boy and I. We're very grateful.”

 

Cas smiled uncertainly, still unsure of the lie they were selling. “It's—our pleasure,” he said quietly. Sam and Dean were already awkwardly navigating the musical chairs of who-would-sit-where.

 

“ _Välsigna dig_ ,” Mrs Olsson whispered, nodding. _Bless you._ Swedish. Castiel thought it was like music on her tongue.

 

He sat down next to Dean as Yann came bustling in with a casserole dish in his hands, held tight between two oven mitts, and set it down in the middle of the table. Steam pillowed from the top, Yann waving it out of his face while he arranged the glass pan on the trivet.

 

“Back in a second,” he called, trotting back to the kitchen to get something else.

 

Mrs. Olsson touched the pads of her fingers to her mouth, obscuring her affectionate smile, the other stroking the heavy silver end of her fork. "You are all so handsome for insurance brokers," she said, her voice laced with an amused sort of suspicion.

 

"Ah," Sam laughed, coughing into his fist. "Thank you."

 

"All the other agents are so stuffy," she sighed, her lips in a playful smirk. "But I like this look. Very casual. Very good to have for dinner."

 

Sam gave another laugh, playing with the edge of his linen napkin, ducking his head in boyish embarrassment. Paying more attention, Dean managed to tear his eyes away from the food to take a better look at his hostess. Perhaps it was just because of the atmosphere, but she was very lovely. She had an old world charm about her - the sort of face he'd seen in Victorian paintings.

 

"Your home is just as lovely as you are," Cas said, voicing Dean's thoughts, and Dean knew without looking that Cas' face was just as earnest as his words sounded. "You keep a wonderful house."

 

She nodded her head in thanks, her fingers having moved away from her chin to twirl a piece of her fair hair around her finger, a light blush scattered across her cheeks, her cornflower blue eyes gleaming in the honey colored light. A breeze filtered through the house, and Dean smelled violets all of a sudden.

 

"It would be a very different house without my Yann," she replied, and Dean could see the pride on her heart-shaped face. Maybe that was what made her so beautiful. "I'd be lost without him. He is a very good boy to stay and take care of an old woman like me!"

 

"Hardly an old woman," Dean said, and her blush deepened, her hand coming to her mouth once more. She turned her head to look at him sideways, shy and old-fashioned. He grinned at her, and Cas was compelled to reach across the small space between himself and Dean and touch his hand where it rested on the hunter's knee. Though he loved all the many facets of Dean, this one - the charming, wholesome, dear one - was one of his most treasured favorites.

 

It was very much Mary Winchester's Dean.

 

Yann reemerged a moment later, setting down a plate of thick white bread and a plastic tub of margarine. He pulled his chair out with a dull scrape and sat down heavily, grinning.

 

"It's good?" he asked his mother, and she smiled, all teeth and no obscuring fingers.

 

"Perfect," she told her son, and he flushed just like his mother did, Dean noted, watching Yann pick up the heavy serving spoon. He took his mother's plate and she clucked at him. "Guests first, Yann," she murmured, looking at Sam, who quickly offered his own plate for Yann to fill.

 

The teenager glanced at Sam and dug down into the dish, spooning a heaping portion onto Sam's plate. He searched Sam's eyes.

 

"Do you need more?" he asked. Sam shook his head, a bit taken with it all, and laid his plate back on the mat in front of him, staring at the food.

 

"It's chicken divan," Mrs. Olsson said, watching him with curiosity. Sam lifted his wide eyes to her and she smiled warmly. "Has your Mamma ever made it for you?"

 

"No ma’am," Sam said quietly. "Our mother passed away."

 

Mrs. Olsson nodded at him and reached her bird-like hand across the table to pat his wrist sympathetically. Sam looked to Dean who kept his eyes on his plate, mouth caught in a sad sort of line.

 

"Is he your brother?" she asked, tilting her head. "You said 'our mother.'"

 

"Insurance is a family business, Mrs. Olsson," Dean responded before Sam could, and she nodded, satisfied.

 

"Call me Helena," she insisted, her tone growing more and more relaxed with each moment. "I am no old woman, after all!"

 

"Not at all," Dean sounded, finally taking up food, smiling at her.

 

Helena took one look at the ridiculously small portion of food in front of her son and scolded him in Swedish, reaching over to put more on his plate.

 

"Mamma," Yann said, attempting to sound annoyed, and she hushed him, continuing to scrape the rest of the casserole onto Yann's plate.

 

It appeared, to Cas, like a routine that was often enacted. A ceremony of sorts. Cas watched the two of them and stroked the back of Dean's hand under the table.

 

"Please eat," Helena said, once she was satisfied with Yann's food. The boys picked up their forks and the table descended into a comfortable quiet, everyone consumed with eating, the silence interrupted only by the soft clanks and tings of cutlery against porcelain.

 

As their food disappeared the conversation grew, the boys content to eat and chat with Helena whenever she directed them with her careful questions. She ate like a bird, eating hardly anything at all, and Dean figured it was probably because she talked so much, eager to learn about her guests.

 

"Did Mamma tell you what she does?" Yann said at the conclusion of a brief conversation with Cas on his position in the trio. Cas had kept it vague, Dean jumping in to explain he was a very good friend. Their best. Helena had tapped a bit of casserole off of her fork and smiled to herself in a way that said _a very good friend indeed._

 

"Yann," she sighed, her cheeks going rosy at the mention of whatever it was. She touched her hot cheek and shook her head.

 

"What do you do?" Sam prodded, and Helena opened her mouth but Yann beat her to the answer.

 

"She sews and crochets. She's the best of anyone in town and everyone wants something she's made."

 

"He exaggerates," Helena said, smoothing her hair self-consciously, peering up at the three other men. She sighed again, and folded her napkin crisply, setting it over her half-empty plate. "I don't do much. Just a few things here and there."

 

"It's beautiful," Yann interrupted. He turned to her, excited. "Can I show them?"

 

Helena shook her head and clucked her tongue again.

 

"Please do," Cas said. "We'd love to see it."

 

Dean balked, turning to Cas, whose eyes were fixed on their hostess. Sam too, was genuinely interested. Dean mopped the last bit of chicken divan off of his plate with the crust of his bread, and resigned himself to agreeing.

 

"It's nothing," she waved. "Baptismal gowns for the babies at the church and sometimes a veil and a few doilies..."

 

Yann shook his head in disagreement. "Not just that - she's making this big thing! It's really something."

 

"It's a table cloth," she explained. "It's nothing. They're not interested, Yann, don't be so pushy."

 

"How about we clear the table and you come and show us?" Sam said, and she laughed at herself.

 

"Well, alright," she said tentatively, her power chair rolling back from the table.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They did what was promised, even going so far as to put a pot of coffee on, and then they filed back into the dining room, re-seating themselves at the empty table. They did not hear the hum of Helena's chair this time, but instead a soft, staggered footfall as she came slowly in, carrying a bundle in her arms.

 

"She's afraid she'll get the ends caught in the wheels," Yann whispered to them.

 

The frail woman paused at the table and Yann got up to help her, but before she unfurled the huge cloth in her arms she looked shyly at the men watching her.

 

"Don't laugh," she said. "It's just something I do when I have the time, but I started it when Jakob died..."

 

"Jakob's my dad," Yann murmured.

 

Yann took two corners and stepped back, the cloth coming undone. The three seated pushed their chairs back as Yann and his mother carefully arranged the linen work on the table.

 

They were quite at a loss for words.

 

"See, it's nothing," Helena muttered.

 

"You did this?" Dean said, disbelieving that someone who looked no bigger than his pinky finger could have accomplished so much.

 

He picked up an edge of the cloth, staring at it. The scalloped lace was so intricate he swore there were pictures in it; pinwheels of lace and fine thread all connected together. Above that, painstakingly embroidered, was a border at least five inches wide, the soft muted colors accented by deep rich tones, all converging into one massive mural expressed around the ivory cloth.

 

"What is it?" Sam asked, picking up a piece too to look at it further. Deep blue and violet flowers sprouting from the banks of a cerulean river, a kingfisher with wings spread, laughing beak gaping under the lavender sky.

 

"The river, mostly," Helena said. "Little things here and there that I like or that Jakob liked." Her voice was quiet as she spoke, caressing the linen. "The lace is from my wedding veil. I did it all myself...but that was before my hands got so sore," she said, laughing.

 

Cas marveled at the handiwork. "This is a masterpiece," he breathed, examining it in closer detail. "How long has this taken you?"

 

"Jakob died sixteen years ago, so on and off since then. Here and there, when I have time. It isn't finished yet - I don't think it ever will be. My husband always liked to watch me work, so I always keep adding things.”

 

“This is—this is really stunning, Mrs Olsson,” Sam said.

 

It was almost too intricate to fathom, a vast mural of the river and everything surrounding it, like the map of a life, or a love. There was nearly too much to see.

 

They gazed at it, in various stages of something like rapture, until Yann fidgeted a little.

 

“I think the coffee's done,” he said, and went in to take the pot off, and slowly Helena began to fold the tablecloth up again. Cas reached across to help, meeting her soft shaking fingers with his own, catching up all the embroidery and lace into a neat white square.

 

“I'll never sell it,” she murmured. Dean and Cas followed her slowly into the hall, hands hovering behind her back as if to steady her; they reached a linen closet and she opened it, and carefully placed the masterpiece on a dusty wooden shelf, smoothing it out with her veined, crippled fingers. “Too precious to sell.”

 

“What will you do with it?” Cas asked, softly, as she shuffled around the door to sink back into her power chair.

 

“Work until my hands won't anymore,” she said, smiling gently up at him. “And Yann will have it for his wedding. It's a good tablecloth for a wedding.”

 

They heard the sounds of coffee cups clattering in the dining room, and she pushed her chair forward with a little hum of the tiny engine. For a moment Dean and Castiel stood in the hall, breathless, for some reason, in the wake of the little woman who had created so much.

 

“I'm glad we came,” Cas said, catching Dean's eyes.

 

Dean paused, and smiled a little bit.

 

“Me too,” he said, touching Cas' wrist for a moment, and then he followed Helena Olsson back into the room with the glass porch doors, and Cas followed at his heels.

 

 

* * *

 

They left when the full moon was well into the sky. Yann stayed entirely human throughout the evening, much to his joy—Dean saw him glancing at the window every few minutes until at least an hour under the moonlight had passed, and every minute that passed in peace brought a bigger smile to his face.

 

Mrs Olsson and her son walked to the front door with them, and she shook their hands again as they passed her, and beckoned each of them down for a kiss on the cheek for good measure. Yann thanked them profusely for nothing in particular as he closed the door, and shut out the light against their content and smiling faces.

 

They lingered for a moment on the porch.

 

“That was...really nice,” Sam said, sounding a little startled, as they started down the steps, past the wind-chimes making soft sounds by the door. “Weird—but nice.”

 

“Maybe we ought to make friends with teenage werewolves more often,” Dean said, and Cas nudged his shoulder.

 

“Do you think they believed that insurance lie?” Cas said, and Sam chuckled to himself.

 

“Well, I'm sure they will,” he said, “once the changes I made to her policy kick in.”

 

Cas and Dean stopped on the drive to stare at him.

 

“What?” Sam said, shrugging. “I had some time to kill before we left the motel. I hacked the database. Fixed things up. Made everything cheaper for her.”

 

“You are scarily nice sometimes, dude,” Dean said, shaking his head, pulling open the driver's side door.

 

They piled into the car and backed down off the bluff, and Cas looked back at the twinkling lights in the Olsson house windows until they vanished into the trees.

 

By the time they made it back to the Motel 6 both Cas and Sam were asleep, full of good food and pleasant company, and Dean had to shake them both awake. There was no quibbling over where Cas would sleep that night; they were all too contentedly tired to care. He collapsed onto Dean's bed, blinking sleepily, and when Dean turned out the light and crawled in next to him, for once he didn't turn his back but lay on his side, pushing his head into the pillow and mumbling a “goodnight, Cas,” under his breath.

 

Cas whispered, “Goodnight, Dean,” and felt for his hand under the blankets. He squeezed it once, glad that he could do that much, and closed his eyes.

 

 

* * *

 

The next morning they sat in a mutual stupor of motel coffee and lazy bones until the sun was halfway into the sky, and Sam had gone through every single article in Yann's binder. He'd been exhausting Google as well, all morning, and just as Dean was starting to stir for lunch and Cas was starting to feel fully awake, he closed his laptop and rubbed his eyes and said, “Okay.”

 

The other two looked at him, blinking.

 

“It looks like that peach orchard in Greenacre is our best bet for now. It's the closest and it's the biggest of these—things. They're having that festival, we can just sneak in as more press and see what's up. So I vote we pack up, head out there. We can get there by tonight.”

 

“And why this place exactly?” Dean said groggily, unfolding himself from his seat to throw away his coffee cup.

 

“There's Yann's article, but get this—that preacher Bobby was talking about? I found a reference to him from ages back. Says he was from Greenacre originally. That's where he started out, and then he left on the riverboat Bobby mentioned. _The Elaine._ ”

 

“Good enough for me,” Dean said. They looked at Cas for confirmation and he nodded.

 

In relative quiet they packed up and loaded the Impala, and as the brothers wrestled with the false bottom in the trunk (something was stuck underneath), Cas wandered a little ways into the parking lot, looking out at the river one more time. He could almost see Helena Olsson's embroidery in the water, the indigos and purples and blues wending through the current.

 

“Cas, come on.”

 

He turned, pulled on the hook of Dean's voice, and climbed into the back, keeping his eyes fixed on the water through the window.

 

They pulled out of the parking lot, and out of Winona, under a pale summer sun. East, to Wisconsin, and whatever was waiting for them there.


	2. Greenacre, WI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit, cras amet.”

Everyone knew the Francis sisters. Even without the family orchard or Clint Francis (arguably the most bombastic man in Dodge County) for an uncle, they still would have remained notorious on premise alone.

 

Their mother, a gardening enthusiast, and their father, the esteemed owner of the Greenacre Feed and General Store, had raised them to be the most desirable girls in Wisconsin out of the hope that they would snag husbands and have their futures settled as soon as possible, with all possible Pride-and-Prejudice cliches included.

 

Their work was a standing success.

 

They doted and spoiled and groomed and dolled them until they were as delightful as four sisters could be, and everyone knew who they were, and everyone watched for them. There they were on Sunday mornings, filing into church one behind the other, their Sunday dresses and church hats on, their long chestnut hair glistening in the early morning sunshine and their voices soft as they chatted amongst themselves.

 

They flitted about town like Greek muses, inspiring the love of nearly every boy in their high school class. You had never seen four more beautiful, delicate creatures, each one lovelier than the next, and none so lovely as Lily, the youngest of the four (Rose, Hyacinth, and Violet, respectively—and the fairytale nonsense of the sisters' names did not amuse Lily—not even a little).

 

She, by some twist of fate or luck, had a wide streak of wild in her. Their great-great-great-great grandmother, if you believed the stories, had been Menominee, and married a lone farmer way back when. Somehow, instead of diffusing into the preceding individuals, her native blood had flooded into Lily all at once, skipping over whole generations in the process.

 

Whether it was that piece of Menominee soul, or maybe just the river water that made things grow so big, none could really say for sure. All that could be made of it was that Lily Francis was an awful lot of person for a tiny little town like Greenacre.

 

Crammed into her five-foot-four frame there was the temperament of a wildcat and an itch so deep down in her skin she thought she might jump out of it any minute. It was her twenty-fourth summer, and her twenty-fourth peach festival that crazy green May, and she was fidgety as a sinner in church. She was sick of peaches and she was sick of the same people she’d seen every day her whole life. She was tired of manning her father’s store and watching her sisters go off and get engaged over and over to the same fools. She was exhausted by the small town and the stifling air. It seemed horrendously unfair that the river was only a mile away, a crime that something so big and so free was right there out of her reach.

 

Her sisters didn’t understand (except Violet—but Violet was intrinsically understanding of all people and didn’t count), and her mother and her father were well on their way to a panic attack over her ongoing single status. She was by far the most beautiful and charming of her sisters; she should have been married at eighteen and helping whatever husband she had to take over the orchard. Clint, too asinine to settle down, had a string of girlfriends and no wife, so the task of carrying on the legacy of the Francis Peach Farm had fallen to his younger brother and, by default, his daughters.

 

But Lily had turned down Travis Gissler for the third time that spring.

 

It was the town consensus that Lily Francis was never going to let herself get married.

 

Lily had to disagree. She had all the respect for marriage her family did and understood all the weight of it and more. She thought about getting married as much as anyone else.

 

She just felt, as people like her simply feel, that something big was going to wander up to her one day, and she’d die before she let something like marriage tie her down when it showed up.

 

For Lily Francis, it was just the frustrating matter of waiting.

 

 

* * *

 

Dean was extremely apprehensive about parking the Impala in the field where he had been directed. Trucks and teenagers were everywhere, leaning against the jacked, mud-stained wheels and staring at the classic car as if it had literally dropped down from another planet. A few of the more confident kids came closer, peering in at the three men with interest. Dean narrowed his eyes at them and cut the engine, swinging the door open and getting out before they could draw nearer.

 

They were in the middle of a dirt lot, surrounded by rows of cars at least a hundred long, the Impala a black splotch in the middle of the rusted-over reds and sun-washed blues of the other vehicles. Up ahead, people trickled under a huge wooden arch featuring a marquee for the festival. Beyond that, there were the fluttering tops of tents and pennants attached to booths and the conspicuous rise of a Ferris wheel into the blue sky at the end of the midway.

 

“I didn’t think there’d be so many people,” Sam said, following Dean to get their IDs from the trunk. The teenagers had dispersed, ambling towards the fairgrounds, leaving them alone in their row.

 

“Hmm,” Dean mumbled, opening up the trunk and glancing around to see if anyone was watching. “Well, when you live in the middle of nowhere this must be a big thing.”

 

“You think?”

 

Cas stretched his arms over his head, having climbed out of the car last, leaning on one side and then the other, spine cracking. His back was to the brothers, and Dean looked up from fishing through the cigar box, momentarily distracted by the way Cas’ shirt rode up. After a few more seconds, the angel finished stretching and turned, coming to the back of the car to stand beside them.

 

“Here,” Dean said gruffly, pushing a press pass at Cas and clipping his own to the pocket of his shirt, Sam doing the same. Satisfied with themselves, they migrated down the rows of cars, the sounds of the festival growing closer and closer.

 

There was the distorted music coming from the booths and electric bleeps of midway games and the smell of peaches and the hiss of deep fryers, and somewhere, from one of the white tents, there was the dull thump of bass guitar carrying over the crowds. Greenacre, on a regular day, had barely five hundred people, but folks of all ages had come from all over Dodge County to enjoy the festival, swelling the population to easily double its usual number.

 

“Where do we even start?” Dean mumbled, moving out of the way of a group of young girls. They were dressed in farm clothes, holding plastic bags full of peaches. The littlest one stumbled to keep up, holding her over-sized straw hat against her head, tripping in her boots. Cas watched them go by, smiling.

 

Sam, being taller than ninety-nine percent of those around him, gazed over the heads of the other festival goers, attempting to answer Dean’s question while the crowd surged around them. Many held crates and baskets of peaches on their ways out, smiling and laughing over all the noise; literally no one that Sam could see looked displeased about anything.

 

“Is it just me, or do all these people seem _really_ happy?” Sam said, unable to find a specific place for them to go.

 

“They’re celebrating a time of plenty,” Cas replied, stepping closer to Dean in order to avoid being in the way of an elderly couple. “I’m sure they’re very happy.”

 

“Well, we’ll see how long it lasts,” Dean sighed, picking a direction. They traveled down the midway, past the booths, past people calling out in advertisement of candied apples or funnel cakes or fried peach pies. Dean’s stomach growled and he shook his head; he’d had a huge lunch and he was still starving. He blamed the simply amazing smells and shrugged the hunger off.

 

“That sign says the orchard is around this corner,” Cas said suddenly, pointing. Dean and Sam stopped up short, following his finger, and sure enough, there was a big brown arrow directing traffic towards the back of the festival. People coming around the corner also had the telltale bushels under their arms and flushed, glad faces. “They must tack the festival onto the back of the property,” Cas finished, hand dropping back to his side. Dean nodded.

 

Craning his head, Sam could see the tops of the trees over the tent closest to them. “Well, if Clint Francis is anywhere, I bet it’s there,” he said, looking back at the other two. “It’s a good start at least.”

 

“Well, let’s do it then,” Dean said, reaching over to straighten Cas’ press badge before striding forward. Sam looked at Cas and Cas caught his eye, both of them stepping at the same time to follow Dean.

 

“So,” Sam began, as they rounded the corner together. Sure enough, there was the orchard; the festival had indeed been positioned at the back of the property, butted up along the white-washed fence that bordered the groves, long lines of trees extending a few acres back, a tall white farmhouse rising up over the tree tops. Far off, in the next pasture, Sam could see the black and white splotches of dairy cows and a little group of horses, and beyond that, wide meadow.

 

“So?” Cas prompted, watching Dean walk up ahead of them, out of earshot.

 

“You and Dean,” Sam said, and Cas’ shoulders tensed a little. “If it’s not too much to ask.”

 

“Never, Sam,” Cas said sincerely, glancing up at him. “It’s just – a complicated question.”

 

“Yeah, I figured as much,” Sam sighed, and the three of them passed through the gap in the fence where the orchard began. People were everywhere, climbing ladders to get peaches; the trees were still dripping with them, despite it being the beginning of the second week of the festival. Sam shrugged his shoulders; Dean had stopped, looking around for someone to talk to.

 

“Listen, whatever you guys decide—” He shrugged again. “I’m okay with it. If you’re a thing or not, like, it makes no difference to me, so. I mean, as long as you're happy, you know?” He trailed off, and Cas couldn’t help the relieved and affectionate smile crawling across his face.

 

“Thank you, Sam,” he said. “You don’t know how much that means.”

 

Dean turned around, making an impatient face at his brother.

 

“The hell are you two going on about?”

 

“Nothing.” Sam waved it off, coming to a stop closer to Dean. They all stood there, looking around, but nobody around looked like Clint Francis – at least, not the picture that had been used in the papers. There wasn’t much around; just the trees and the people, and a long table set up near the entrance with handmade posters displaying prices for peaches and a few donation spots for local charities.

 

Sam saw a young woman standing with her back turned, hands on her hips, as if best deciding how to move the trays of mason jars in front of her. She raised her hand to the back of her head and clutched at her ponytail in frustration, her other hand itching her side slightly before stilling on her waist.

 

“Where are you going?” Dean asked, watching his younger brother start towards the table.

 

“Just wait here a second!” Sam called over his shoulder. “I’m just going to ask about Clint!”

 

Dean made an unimpressed face, watching Sam cut across the flocks of people. Cas took the opportunity to reach up and brush an eyelash off of Dean’s cheek; the hunter jolted and then tilted his head in confusion. Cas smiled and, in a moment of uncertain bravery, playfully raked the hair up over Dean’s forehead.

 

“What was that for?” Dean asked softly, lips quirking, and Cas shrugged, his hand slipping into the crook of Dean’s arm, his head resting just against his shoulder for a moment.

 

“You looked tense,” Cas said matter-of-factly, and Dean stiffened, but soon found himself relaxing.

 

“Hmm,” he murmured, shifting into Cas’ touch. Cas squeezed his arm.

 

 

* * *

 

“Excuse me, miss?”

 

“Yeah?” The young woman pondering her mason jars turned quicker than Sam had expected, hands on her hips, her lips pursed out in frustration. She lifted her eyebrows at him.

 

“I—sorry, I'm looking for Clint Francis? Er— _we_ are.” He gestured aimlessly back in the general direction of Dean and Cas.

 

The woman leaned around him to peer at them.

 

“Yeah? What for?” she said, looking up at him. Her eyes were no-nonsense brown so deep it was almost pitch, like the centers of black-eyed susans, and there was a flush of exasperation on her sun-browned neck and face.

 

“We just wanted to ask him a few questions for an—article,” Sam said, unsure exactly why he was stammering. _Damn,_ but she was gorgeous, even with summer sweat on her brow and her hair pulled messily pulled back and that frustrated frown on her face.

 

“What paper?”

 

He blinked, momentarily dazed. “—what?”

 

“What paper are you from? We've had all the usuals around already.” She sounded bored, fidgety.

 

“Er—we're on online publication,” Sam said, smoothly slipping back under the pre-prepared lie. “We just wanted to, you know. Spread the story around a little more, reach a wider audience.”

 

“Sure.” She cocked her eyebrows at him again; Sam thought vaguely that they were the most expressive eyebrows he'd ever seen. “Well, I hate to disappoint, but my uncle's pretty busy, you know. Running a festival and all.” She crossed her arms, flicking her head to swipe away a stray hair.

 

“Your uncle? Are you—you're one of the Francis girls, then?”

 

“Lily,” she said, sticking out her hand so suddenly that Sam almost started. He blinked, and then took it. Her grip was strong as an ox as they shook and when she let go he could feel his knuckles throbbing. “I figure I could give you what you need for that article, if you still want to talk to a member of the family.”

 

“Sure—sure! Yeah, that'd be great, uh—”

 

“Your colleagues seem pretty busy,” she said, without taking her eyes off his face, in the same tone of boredom. Sam glanced over his shoulder. Sure enough, as he'd feared, Dean and Cas were wandering away from them, pulled by some unknown force, arm in arm, into the rows of peach trees, looking as if they hadn't a care in the world.

 

“Uh,” Sam said.

 

“Work relationships, huh,” said Lily. There was a smirk playing at her lips that refused to fully show itself, as if she knew exactly the kind of game they were up to.

 

“Uh—yeah...”

 

“Tell you what, ah—”

 

“Sam. Sam Winchester. Call me Sam,” he stammered, feeling a hot flush of embarrassment creeping up his neck. That was new. He couldn't remember the last time he'd blushed.

 

“Sam. Let me finish up here, come back in about an hour, we'll go down to Marlene's on the square and chat. Sound good?”

 

“That sounds—great, yeah. Thanks.” Awkwardly, he shook her hand again. The big-toothed smile she gave him clearly said _you're full of shit, but I don't really care,_ and before he could make any more of an ass of himself, Sam turned tail and half-jogged, half-walked to catch up with his brother and Cas, to give them a piece of his mind about public displays of affection on the job. For Christ's sake.

 

 

* * *

 

Cas, it seemed, was fully embracing this whole relaxing-when-given-the-chance thing, and Dean couldn't for the life of him decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. They were walking down a row of peach trees when Sam came up behind them, and Cas might as well have been a child at Disney World, looking up at the ladders and pickers and at the kids running by underfoot as if he'd never seen anything so fantastic.

 

They were still arm in arm, and none of the festival-goers seemed to have noticed, or particularly cared. A few gave them lingering glances, and one a curled lip, but no one said anything—they simply passed by and left them to themselves. As Sam had said earlier, everyone seemed _extraordinarily_ happy, and the mood was infectious. For the second time in the last few days Dean found himself relaxing into his stride, making himself take the time to appreciate the sun sinking in the sky above the big white farmhouse, the smell of the peaches, the laughter of the people around him. Cas' body leaning into his just the slightest bit.

 

“Who was that?” he said over his shoulder to Sam as his brother rejoined them.

 

“Lily Francis,” Sam said. “Clint's niece. She said I could interview her.”

 

“Just you?”

 

“Well,” Sam scoffed, “she thought you two seemed a little _busy_.”

 

Dean laughed, and Cas gave Sam a sheepish smile of apology.

 

“We're going to some cafe on the square to talk in about an hour,” he continued, sidestepped a man and woman standing under some leaning branches, kissing. Cas stared at them as they passed by. “Can I take the car?”

 

Dean dug in his pocket and tossed Sam the Impala keys over his shoulder. Sam caught them and stared at them.

 

“You aren't coming?”

 

“Were we invited? We'll just stay here. See the sights and stuff.”

 

Sam frowned, and Dean caught his look, pausing in the grass between the trees.

 

“So I get to do all the legwork. Thanks,” Sam said, pocketing the keys with a grimace.

 

“Come on, Sammy, that girl was gorgeous. Don't think of it as legwork. Think of it as—having the attention of a pretty girl all to yourself for a few hours. And the info's just a bonus.”

 

Sam sighed, and lingered awkwardly in place as Cas and Dean started walking again. He scowled a little at the kissing couple under the boughs before he made up his mind and went after his brother and the angel again.

 

 

* * *

 

They wandered for an hour, out of the orchard and back to the fairgrounds, as the sun was falling below the horizon and someone somewhere powered up a generator. The Ferris wheel lit up, and strings of fairy lights hung between stalls and trees and back again blinked to life, like low-slung stars overhead. Dean bought them all cans of beer from a cooler and a funnel cake for Cas, who had never had one before.

 

“Dude, you haven't _lived_ until you've had funnel cake,” Dean said, handing him the wavy paper plate. Cas promptly choked on the powdered sugar and chugged half his beer to wash it down, blinking rapidly. Dean tried his best not to laugh.

 

Sam left to go and find Lily a while later, and promised to call on his way back, but only after making Dean swear that he'd do the interviewing wherever they went next. Dean agreed, reluctantly, and waved him off, and he and Cas watched him vanish into the throngs of festival-goers.

 

 

* * *

 

Lily Francis sighed and stared at the tall boy hovering around her table. He had arrived exactly an hour after their last conversation and had been looking at her sideways for the past five minutes, ducking his head every time she bothered to lift her face. She blew a flyaway strand of chestnut hair out of her face and shook her head. Whatever he was on about, he was serious. Whether the reason for his interest was based on her or in the bullshit story he had cooked up, she could at least make him work for an answer. Show her a good time.

 

She swept her eyes from his feet to his head, chewing on her lip. It was one thing to get weird questions from the usual creep, but this one – she marveled at the size of his arm – this one was something else entirely. Not inclined to linger any longer, she wiped her forehead and then beat her hands together to get the grit off. She picked up her purse, slinging it over her shoulder, and smoothed her fingers over the crown of her head, knowing she probably looked like a mess.

 

But this was definitely better than standing and talking to people and taking money and pretending she cared anymore.

 

“Dottie! I’m taking off!” she called, and an elderly woman down the table waved a hand at her.

 

“You go have a good time, sugar!” she called, and Lily grinned, walking around and towards Sam. He straightened up immediately, his Adam's apple bobbing as she approached.

 

“Sam, right?” she said bluntly, and Sam nodded.

 

“Right. Sam. Uh – and you’re Lily.”

 

“Brainy _and_ brawny,” she said, half-mocking, blinking at him. “Keep it up and you may just get lucky.”

 

“Oh – I, I would never—” he sputtered, going red, and she reached out a consoling hand, patting his forearm.

 

“Take it easy, honey, I was just teasing.”

 

Sam deflated with relief; her hand slipped back to the strap of her purse. “I just want an interview, I swear. It’s nothing – nothing like that,” he stammered, and much to his surprise her lips curled into the most genuine smile he’d seen yet.

 

“Damn, and here I thought I’d get you to buy me dinner!”

 

Sam listened to the lilt of her voice and found himself smiling like an idiot all over.

 

“I can do that, too,” he mumbled, and she laughed at him. It made him think of music boxes. The kind with little hand painted dancers inside that spun. That was it, her laugh. A sound that pirouetted out of her mouth.

 

“How about this, then,” she chuckled. “I tell you what you want to know about my uncle and you let me drag you around for a few hours, alright?” Her voice trailed off as she shook her head in exasperation. “I haven’t had a chance to do anything all day except work that damn table.”

 

“I—are you sure? I mean, that doesn’t seem very professional, and—” Sam said quickly, cutting her off. Her eyebrow quirked.

 

“About as professional as a handmade press badge and two associates who are more interested in each other than in getting their info,” she replied, eyeing him up.

 

She reached up to his chest and unclipped the fake badge before Sam could say anything, examining it, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she bit back her amusement. She turned the laminated card towards him, grinning. Sam stared at his picture and blanked.

 

“Right, ‘Kurt’?” Her eyes were bright and curious, not accusing.

 

“It’s Sam,” he answered, deciding to just be honest. “Just Sam. The badge is—” He tried to figure out a way to cover. She tilted her head back, staring into his face, eyes narrowed.

 

“You’ve got a story, don’t you?” she said as he fumbled, and Sam closed his mouth.

 

“You have no idea,” he breathed, and she kept staring. Sam shifted, watching her pretty hands play with his press badge, lacquered nails tapping against the plastic. She looked at him like she, too, was searching for something.

 

“You like Johnny Cash?” she asked out of nowhere, after a puzzled moment of silence, still squinting at him. “I love Johnny Cash.”

 

“H-he’s alright. He’s good. Yeah—yeah, I like Johnny Cash. Why?”

 

“Because,” she said seriously, “I’m not about to let a boy who doesn’t like Johnny Cash ride in my truck.”

 

 

* * *

 

So it turned out Sam hadn’t needed the keys after all. Her truck was an ancient Ford, passed down from her grandfather, she’d explained, coaxing it into a start. He’d offered to drive them himself but she’d looked at him as if he had grown a second head.

 

“We’re taking my truck,” she’d said simply, and he’d followed her to it – it ended up being better, he figured. The Impala was boxed in back at the parking lot, but her truck was parked on the orchard, which made getting off of the fairgrounds much easier. The truck finally roared to life and she grinned, pulling out onto the dirt path through the middle of the trees, rumbling between the people till the road curved away towards the farm house. She looked so at home and at ease behind the wheel of this truck, Sam thought, as if all she needed to relax was the purr of an engine and a line of road. Reminded him of Dean, a little, and he smiled.

 

“It meets up with the main road up front,” she said absently, the truck bumping along. She reached over and fiddled with the radio, pushing a tape into the deck and cranking the volume. “Folsom Prison Blues” filled the cab, and she drummed her hands on the steering wheel, pulling past the house and towards the big gates of the property.

 

“This is some place,” Sam said conversationally, splaying his hand on the dashboard when she slowed to turn onto the paved road. Lily shrugged.

 

“It’s alright,” she drawled, her face impassive.

 

“I think it’s more than alright,” Sam continued, trying to remember the real reason he was there. Or something like that. “I mean, it’s pretty incredible. A peach orchard this far north?”

 

She turned her head to him, her eyes clearly expressing _are you fucking kidding me?_ She looked back to the road.

 

“Yes,” she said tiredly, with sarcasm, and Sam could immediately tell she had said what she was about to say at least a million times. “It’s _quite_ a story. A long, laborious history of love and perseverance on the side of the Francis family – flat broke, some guy gave us a few peach pits, and voila!” She waved her hands in front of her face and slapped them down on the wheel. “Miracle peaches. Best in the state. Probably the country, if you ask me.”

 

“Miracle peaches,” Sam repeated. “Anything to say about that?”

 

“What’s there to say? Sometimes that’s all it is. Just a miracle.” She said it as if it were an everyday, thing, miracles; she shrugged her shoulders and leaned back in her seat, toying with the thin chain of the necklace she was wearing. “People try to explain things and sure, that’s alright, but that’s not the important part. The important part is that my family was low, dirt poor. And somebody gave us a way to make a living.”

 

“It didn’t work so well at first, though, did it?” Sam said, looking out the window. He could see the main street of the town up ahead, and the square, Highway 49 running right through the middle with one stoplight.

 

“Yeah, well. Sometimes a miracle takes a while.” She laughed shortly, and then sank into a pause of thought before she said, “You know, it’s good that it didn’t work right away.”

 

Sam stayed silent, but looked at her profile. She leaned her head on her fist, driving on autopilot down the same road she must have driven a thousand times. The sun was splaying over her, coming over his shoulder, and she watched the road, her lip momentarily tugged by her front teeth again. Behind her the pasture land sprawled, neatly partitioned by fences. Cows flicked their tails and dozed in the shade of staggered trees, ambling after each other as the heat of the day waned, giving in to the breeze of evening.

 

“It taught us how to grow them. What good is a miracle if you don’t know what to do with it? I mean, sure, we get some of the biggest peaches and the biggest harvests, and sure, it's practically magical that any of it grows this far north, but if you don’t know how to tend it, if you don’t know how to look after it, then what’s the point? All those years my granddaddies had to fight the ground and the frosts for fruit when they could have picked up and gone south anytime, all that hard trouble and practice, all of it, so that when it took, when things just worked, it was something they could make the most of.”

 

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Sam said quietly. She was right. He hadn’t though at all about how hard it must have been to run the orchard in those first formative years, the struggle of watching it fail over and over and then finally, miraculously, flourishing. He tried to imagine the joy that must have surrounded the occasion. Suddenly the festival took on a whole new meaning.

 

“Most people don’t want to know about all the boring hard work,” she chuckled, flashing him a brilliant smile. They were in town now, and Sam could see the restaurant on the corner, the name written in huge fancy script. The streets were deserted; no one coming or going, though a few cars were parked along the sidewalks, mostly trucks like Lily’s. She shifted into park with a lurch and a crank of gears, the music cutting off with the engine.

 

“That’s my daddy’s store over there,” she said absently, pointing across the street while she rolled up the window till it was just barely cracked on top. Sam peered around her. Greenacre General and Feed.

 

“He doesn’t work at the orchard?”

 

“Oh, he does that too. 'Specially during harvest time, but that’s really my uncle Clint’s business. That man’s got two loves: gin and peaches. Daddy just minds the store during the off season.” She said the last bit on a sigh, climbing out of the cab and jumping down; Sam hurried to do the same, caught in the moment.

 

“So, what do _you_ do?” Sam asked, as she stepped up onto the curb beside him.

 

She stopped. It was clear no one had asked her _that_ before. She blinked up at him, brow furrowing. A strand of her hair had fallen out of her ponytail during the drive and was caught in the corner of her mouth and he wanted to reach out and brush it away. Her eyes searched his face, fingers tightening on the strap of her purse. He sized up her small frame, the way her shoulders pinched inwards, like she was cramped.

 

“—What are you doing in this town?” he said, surprising himself with his own boldness, and her mouth fell open a fraction.

 

“I don’t—” she mumbled, blushing. “I—”

 

She stared at him some more, not with anger but with mild shock at the question, and then tore her eyes away, walking quickly up to the door at Marlene’s. He worried for a moment that she was mad at him – that she was offended by his forwardness, but there was something about Lily Francis that was undeniably big. Sam had hardly known her an hour and he could tell that she had outgrown Greenacre by miles. Sam turned, following her movement, anxious of what her face would look like.

 

“Well, come on!” she barked, holding the door open for him. “You promised me a good time!”

 

Sam saw that she was still flushed, her dark eyes flooded with some kind of panic and excitement he didn’t know the origin of. Not a trace of anger to be found, but something else entirely.

 

Butterflies bumped in Sam’s stomach.

 

“What are you waiting for?” she asked again, giving him a soured and dizzy grin.

 

Sam smiled back and followed her in.

 

* * *

 

They left Marlene's after an hour or two of conversation—steering often away from the actual topic of the evening and into the realms of inconsequentials—and then mutually agreed to head back to the festival to meet up with what Lily called Sam's “workplace liability.” She'd given him much more than he'd bargained for: what must have been the complete history of the orchard, and most of her own history as well. Sam thought that maybe she'd just needed an ear to vent to; as soon as she'd warmed up to him she'd spilled almost everything.

 

As they were driving back in the dark towards the distant towering clutch of Ferris wheel lights, Sam asked, “So—I just have a few more questions.”

 

“Shoot.”

 

“Ever heard the name Amos Porter?”

 

Lily whistled, long and low. “Of course. Everybody's heard of him. Kinda hard to grow up in this town without knowing about Amos Porter.”

 

“What do you know about him?”

 

Lily paused, biting at her lip, and he saw her eyes slide towards him in the rear-view mirror.

 

“You're really not a reporter at all, are you?” she said.

 

Sam swallowed hard, turning his face front.

 

“No,” he said. “But it's—important.”

 

“Amos Porter's fad river valley religion is important?”

 

“It could be.”

 

“Should I bother asking who you really are and what you really want? Because people don't really ask about that stuff anymore.”

 

“I thought it was just a fad religion.”

 

“It was never just a fad religion,” she said, almost too low for him to hear, and he had to look at her again, really look, in the passing slices of light from the streetlamps, to be sure she'd said it at all.

 

“What does that mean, exactly?”

 

Lily sighed, shifting her shoulders. She reached up and tugged at her ponytail.

 

“Look—it's not exactly a point of pride. People don't talk about it much because—well, the people who picked up what Porter was teaching, they took it _really_ seriously. To the point where a few folks still...it's still around. That's what I'm saying.” Lily banked onto a sharp left turn; the white farmhouse rose up out of the dark in the moonlight. “It's downright solemn. You leave Riverlands people to their own stories and you keep your own God around here.”

 

Sam felt something pinch in his throat at the sound of it— _Riverlands people_ , the clear denotation of separation, a vast gap.

 

“So...what was Amos Porter preaching that was so...big?”

 

Lily paused, pulling in a slow rumble up onto the dirt drive. She parked and turned off the car, and they sat in the dying rattle of the engine, in the darkness. A light on the first floor cast a little glow onto their faces and the dash of the truck.

 

“It was just a story, you know,” Lily said—with a tone of near-reverence, Sam thought, and he wasn't sure why. “I've never heard the whole thing and it doesn't make much sense in bits and pieces, really. And there was nothing to do with death, or hell, or damnation, and that was all you ever heard from preachers in those days, in these parts. It was—I mean, cliché as it is, it was a love story.”

 

She looked at him. Absently Sam wondered if he should be writing this down. A big part of him said no.

 

“Just a love story,” she said. “Riverlands people say it's the oldest love story in the world. And God. God in the river and the sky.”

 

She trailed off, as if unsure of herself, and turned away from him again, hands lying nervous in her lap, looking out at the farmhouse. Sam settled into his seat, and looked at the house as well—it seemed somehow detached from them in the cab of the truck. The entire world seemed one step removed, and for the first time that night Sam thought it had nothing to do with the fact that Lily Francis was as gorgeous as she was. It was something to do with what she was saying.

 

“You'd have to talk to one of them,” she said; she almost seemed to shiver and unbuckled her seat belt, bracing her foot against the door to pop it open. “If you want to know about Porter's gospel, or whatever. I don't know very much about it.”

 

She hopped down onto the gravel, and Sam saw her face moving in and out of the light and it clicked.

 

“You believe it, don't you?” he said, and she froze, holding the door open, and looked up at him. “You believe whatever Porter was preaching.”

 

She blinked, fidgeting, bit her lower lip hard. That seemed to be her habit, biting her lips, a nervous tic.

 

“I don't know what I believe,” she said, trying to sound firm and failing. “Now are you gonna get out of my truck and take me to the fair? Or are you going to ditch me now that we're done playing newspaper reporter?”

 

 

* * *

 

“Having fun?” Dean asked, as he and Cas drifted in and out of the push and pull of people, past the band tent where some local folk talent were going at it with banjos and guitars. Cas nodded, taking hold of Dean's wrist again, glancing at him to be sure it was alright. He couldn't help but think of the couple in the orchard, kissing under the tree. He wondered how many more months it would be until he could kiss Dean like that, in public, unashamed.

 

The evening had become a pleasant, hazy blur in the past few hours—they had ordered dinner from a barbecue tent and sat at picnic tables with checkered plastic cloths to eat, not talking much, taking in the cooling summer night air, the people milling about; from where they sat they could hear the dull throb of the music, and saw couples dancing aimlessly beside the band tent.

 

Cas suggested the Ferris wheel afterwards, but Dean, ever-wary of heights, shook his head. Instead they stood on the grass with parents waiting for their children to come off the wheel, watching it spin slowly and carefully in the sky, aglitter with lights like stars. Higher still in the deepening indigo of the twilight the real stars were coming out in force, shining in the unpolluted atmosphere like some unfathomable road map pricked with a million pins.

 

“I wonder what it is about this place that makes the harvest so good,” Cas wondered aloud.

 

“Clever farming, I guess,” Dean replied, still watching the enormous wheel spin. “Or something to do with that book Bobby was talking about.”

 

“Isn't there a saying about faith being the biggest part of farming?”

 

“I don't think so.”

 

“Mm. There should be.”

 

“I'm sure Sam'll tell us when he gets back from his date.”

 

“Interview.”

 

“Date.”

 

Cas laughed, softly, and turned his head finally from the sky and the lights to the orchard, now nothing but the silhouettes of treetops against the darker black. Most of the pickers were gone; it was too dark to see the fruit, now, and he could just barely see a few workers breaking down the table with the cash box on it.

 

“We haven't tried the harvest yet,” he said, tugging on Dean's sleeve, and they made their way back through the stalls and tents toward the white fence. Ducking behind a worker carrying the table out, they slipped into the dark orchard, choosing a row of trees at random to hide inside.

 

“I think they're closing,” Dean said.

 

“They won't mind us,” Cas replied.

 

They walked until the noise of the festival became a distant hum, and the Ferris wheel was a twinkling specter without shape, just a mass of spinning lights in the night. A ladder had been left propped against a trunk, and Cas climbed up the first few rungs, reaching up into the leaves to find an un-plucked peach.

 

“Careful,” Dean said, eyeing the wobbling wood with a frown. He reached a hand up to steady Cas from behind. “If you fall you'll fuck up your leg again.”

 

Castiel's fingers closed around a soft orb of fuzz and he pulled; it came off the tree with a little pop, and he held it down for Dean and then reached up for another. When he'd found his own, he climbed back down, and they sat down against the tree to try the fruit.

 

There was a pause as they ate, and after a while Dean said, “Holy crap. These are amazing.”

 

Cas hummed an agreement, mouth too full to comment, and Dean looked at him. In the distant haze of light that just reached them from the festival grounds he could see a quiet smile on the angel's face, a bit of peach juice on his chin. He looked happier here, at this moment, sitting on the ground in a stranger's orchard, than Dean had ever seen him—radiant, almost, even in the dark.

 

He thought, absently, that he looked as if he were meant to be painted into this instant, kept here forever, just as he was—he couldn't think of a better subject for a masterpiece. And that startled him—but it did not frighten him.

 

Dean nudged Cas' shoulder, just a little, and when Cas turned his face to him he leaned across the space between them and kissed him.

 

It was just a small kiss, just enough to taste the peaches on his lips, and it lasted long enough for Cas' eyelids to flicker in surprise. When it ended Castiel's face was too much in shadow to read, even close to Dean's as it was, and tilted; with only a moment of hesitation Cas completed the space between them again and kissed Dean back.

 

They sat against the tree, and Dean's half-eaten peach rolled out of his grasp into the grass. His hand came to hover uncertainly at Castiel's jaw, fingertips just lightly ghosting over the stubble there. He couldn't tell if Cas' eyes were open or closed, and realized he didn't care. There was no passion in it, but not to its detriment—rather there was contentment, and something like relief, like letting out a breath that had been held too long.

 

Something in his chest unwound, uncurled, at the feeling of Castiel's lips.

 

It was like nothing he'd felt in his life.

 

For a moment he wondered why this was happening now, of all places. Wondered why it felt like his first kiss all over again, when it most certainly wasn't.

 

Most of all he wondered why he'd waited this long.

 

Wind tousled the trees above them and when they broke apart again they laughed, unable to see one another in the dark, very small laughs.

 

“Took us long enough,” Dean said, huffed on the end of a chuckle, and leaned back against the tree again, running a juice-sticky hand through his hair.

 

Cas leaned back with him, and didn't reply, but touched a few fingers to his lips as if to hold the kiss there for as long as possible; they looked up at the stars wheeling over the trees, the great atlas of the heavens, without saying a word.

 

 

* * *

 

Up ahead the festival twinkled, a dazzling haze of lights rising up out of the prairie. Sam and Lily fell into step together, Sam slowing his pace to match hers better, his legs far longer than her own. They gravitated together as they walked, her shoulder bumping his arm every few feet. Sam slipped his hands into his pockets and tipped his head back slightly as he walked, looking up at the bright smears of stars across the velvety black.

 

Lily walked like a younger girl would, kicking rocks aside, her forefinger worrying her lower lip, plucking at it, lost in thought. Sam righted his head and glanced at her. Her bare shoulder brushed against him again and he nudged at her with his elbow and she shook her hair out, pulling her hand away from her mouth, embarrassed.

 

 

The dark ended abruptly as they stepped onto the midway again. People were still swarming around the booths and stalls. Many recognized her, and as soon as she appeared she was being called and waved at, people beckoning her over. She refused them gracefully, and suddenly, Sam was startled to find her arm wound around his.

 

“I have a date!” she yelled to someone, cupping her free hand over her mouth and then gesturing at Sam with a shrug. Someone whooped and she laughed, head back, her hip touching his.

 

“Well, Sam. ‘Just Sam’,” she teased. “You’re quite a hit.”

 

Sam laughed nervously. “Is this – is this a date? Now?” he said, over the laughter of some boys going by.

 

Lily tossed her head and squeezed his arm with her own. “I don’t know. You want it to be?” she answered, her smile curling over her face. She seemed more at ease than she had the whole night, with her arm through his. Sam wanted it to be a date very much; he just didn’t know what that meant. Radiant as she was, they'd only just met, and on a lie, at that.

 

“You know I’m leaving. Probably tomorrow,” he said, watching her turn her head, looking around at the lights. When he could see her face again she was chewing her lip – in the bright lights of the fair it had a lovely blush from all the worrying she’d been doing.

 

She didn’t reply, and Sam felt something clench in his chest. It was sadness and disappointment and a tiny petulant fit against the unfairness of it all.

 

They walked in silence, not really going anywhere, until Lily perked up at the sound of music bleeding through the wall of a tent they passed. She stopped, and forced Sam to back track with her so they could look inside.

 

“Rev’s playing!” she said, grinning. “He’s amazing. Does great Cash covers.”

 

Her arm untangled from his as she moved to enter the tent, awkwardly twisting away from him. Without thinking, Sam caught her hand as she pulled back; she froze and nearly tripped over her feet once they’d stopped moving.

 

“I—” he stuttered, his huge fingers covering her own, still holding on.

 

She stared at their hands and then slid her eyes up his chest to his face, considering it for a moment. He started to let go, but her killer grip clamped down and she smiled at him.

 

“Come on!” she said, tugging, pulling him in.

 

The wall of sound hit them as soon as they’d gotten inside, coming from a band up on the small stage, the dance floor in the center crawling with couples. A bar at the back was doling out beers, and people were sitting at plastic tables and chairs sipping and chatting and laughing, their faces red with dancing and booze.

 

“You want anything?” he asked her as she came to another stop, looking around for a place to sit.

 

“Maybe in a bit,” she said, too busy hauling him over to a free table where she could drop her purse. Sam had the vast feeling that no one would be stealing it in this town.

 

She reached over and grabbed his other hand, pulling him towards the dance floor.

 

“What do you say, big man? You wanna dance?” Her voice was a low purr, and Sam nodded, surprised at himself, at how eager he was to do just that.

 

They squeezed in among the dancers. A few folks Lily recognized smiled and continued paying attention to their partners without bothering to make conversation. Lily rocked with the music, a steady strum, and tangled their fingers together, drawing him into movement, moving in turn with him. He stared down at her; she was so small compared to him. His heart sped up as she twisted her hips, moving her body closer to his own, pulling his hands to her waist.

 

“Jesus, you are tall,” she marveled, stretching her arms up to his shoulders as they danced, playfully tugging at a longer piece of his hair. He chuckled and bent his head down towards hers, hands fitting nearly perfectly on her sides, wrinkling the soft material of her skirt.

 

“You don’t seem to mind,” he said softly, and she laughed, her forehead resting on his chest for a beat.

 

“No,” she said. “I guess I don’t.”

 

His fingers edged at the small of her back and she cocked an eyebrow at him.

 

“Getting a little familiar?”

 

In truth, he already felt familiar with her. Or something similar; there was just something about her that he understood, even after only a few hours. Some part of her that was part of him, too. The urge to get out of where she was, the need for change, for growth, for anything. He’d recognized it, like a zap of static electricity. He'd had that, once, himself.

 

“You’re really beautiful,” he said, because it felt right to say, and her lips quirked into a smile.

 

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she said, laughing, shrugging. “You should see my sisters – they’re all better than me.”  
  


“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No. I bet they’re not.”

 

She rolled her eyes, fiddling with the collar of his shirt.

 

“Why are you leaving tomorrow?” she asked. One song in the air bled into the next. She glanced up at him through her lashes. “Can’t you convince those two fools you were with to stay another day?”

 

Sam shook his head slowly, the pinch returning. The upset in her eyes made him worry.

 

“I can’t,” he mumbled. His big hands squeezed just a little at her sides.

 

She nodded, understanding.

 

“Don’t worry, I was just wondering,” she said thinly, trying to smile. “I was just wondering, really.”

 

She looked over at the tables and exhaled. He himself was busy looking at her, memorizing her face, trying to grasp the way she felt standing so close to him. The smell of peach blossoms that drifted into his face every time she moved, the way her ponytail swayed. She probably looked amazing with her hair down. She lifted her dark eyes to him again and he curled closer to her, his hand moving from her waist to tilt her chin up.

 

“I know—I know we only just met, really...but I’m not going to forget you,” he said, and she laughed, laughed at how much that sounded like a fairytale thing to say—but the sound quickly fell quiet. He knew, in the way that he'd suspected all night, that she wanted him to kiss her. Her breath brushed across his mouth, her own fingers rucking the fabric of his shirt.

 

He couldn’t bring himself to do it. There was so much else he should have been thinking about, miracles and books, the whereabouts of his brother and best friend, Amos Porter, Riverlands religion— but, perhaps stupidly, she was the only thing on his mind, the one thing filling up the world. It frightened him, a little. It elated him more.

 

The band struck up a new song and he brushed the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip, over the little rough patch of skin where she picked at it. He imagined her at the counter of the store, staring out the window.

 

“Johnny Cash,” she murmured, absently. Sam smiled a halfway smile and smudged his thumb over the corner of her mouth. Her eyelids fluttered and her brow crawled together in a brief, pained expression before recovering.

 

“I won’t forget you, Lily,” he said again, unsure of why he felt the need to keep repeating it, only certain that he had to say it. Leaving tomorrow. He didn't want to.

 

She shook her head. “Dance with me to Johnny Cash,” she said, pulling herself closer to him. “Be my man for just a few minutes.”

 

Sam swayed with her, felt the way she moved against him, the softness of her curves under his hands, the way she hadn’t moved her mouth more than a few inches from his.

 

Without warning, he brought his hands to her face and abandoned the reasons keeping him from kissing her. She seemed to anticipate it to some extent, and her arms locked around his neck, her thin body lined up with his, his hand wandering down her back and then up again. He wound his arms more firmly around her, feeling when her feet no longer touched the ground, the hum against his chin when she made some little approving noise, smiling against his lips. If people thought anything of it they didn’t say. Seconds later he lowered her down, his mouth following hers till she pulled back.

 

“Don’t hang around,” she said, thickly, once they were parted.

 

“What?” he asked, against her cheek.

 

She brought some distance between them so she could see his face, trying to smile.

 

“You gave me a great time tonight, Sam Winchester,” she said. “A weird one. But a great one. You don’t have to hang around.”

 

“Lily—”

 

“It’s not like that,” she said. Their foreheads were touching, her hands smoothing over his chest. “You – you just go on. Go on with that strange business of yours, alright? You go on and finish what you’ve started, and maybe—if you’re thinking about me, you can come back. I'd like that.”

 

“Let’s get a room,” he said, perhaps a little too hastily. “Just for tonight. My brother won’t mind.”

 

“Honey, no,” she said, laughing, eyes sweet and soft. “No. That’d spoil it.” Her hands moved over his arms. “It’s alright. You – you showed me a really good time.”

 

“Lily, I’ll—”

 

She held up her hand, cutting him off.

 

“Don’t you go telling me things like that. Don’t you go tying me down,” she said. “You just call me when you get a mind. I’ll write my number down for you and if you ever think about it, you just call me. That’ll be that.”

 

Sam brushed the hair from her face, behind her ear.

 

“Promise you’ll pick up the phone, then,” he said, and she rolled her eyes.

 

“I promise.”

 

 

* * *

 

“Is that Sam?”

 

Dean looked up from the bite of caramel apple he was busy with, tucking a few stray pieces of peanut into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed, watching his younger brother approach them out of what seemed like nowhere.

 

“How'd it go?” he asked as Sam came to a stop beside them, lingering outside one of a dozen booths.

 

Cas was having a second go at a funnel cake, Sam saw, and not choking this time; both he and Dean had a sort of easiness to their stances that Sam couldn't quite place. Then again, he was distracted.

 

“Uh—fine,” he said, shrugging, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “I've got some stuff, I guess. D'you want to head out?”

 

Dean looked at Cas, who stuck a sugar-covered thumb in his mouth to suck it clean and then nodded.

 

As they turned into the thinning current of festival-goers, most heading towards the dirt lot as midnight fell over the orchard, Sam caught sight of Lily, on the opposite end of the fairgrounds, helping a man who might have been her uncle break down tables. She caught his eye just long enough to smile a _goodbye_ in his direction.

 

He felt the edge of the receipt she'd written her number on, smooth in his pocket, and smiled back.

 

 

* * *

 

They found a place to stay near the town square, a room surprisingly devoid of traffic noise from the street just outside. It was just after midnight by the time they got settled in and Sam pulled out his press notebook to look through what he'd gotten.

 

“So, according to Lily—Francis,” he said, tacking on her surname and clearing his throat, “Amos Porter started out here. And get this: believe it or not, apparently, a few people in town still go by his religion.”

 

“What—really?” Dean asked, wandering out of the bathroom with his toothbrush stuck in his mouth. Cas was in the corner of the room, getting undressed for bed, and he swiveled his head around to look at the brothers, blinking.

 

Sam shrugged. “That's what she said. Called them _Riverlands people_.”

 

“Did she say where we might find one of those people?” Cas asked, sinking down onto the bed he and Dean had silently claimed.

 

Sam shook his head. “I guess it's kind of a hush-hush thing around here,” he said. “She didn't seem keen to talk about it.”

 

“Well, that's a good sign,” Dean mumbled. “Secretive religious people. My favorite.”

 

“Dean.”

 

“There's always something fishy in that stuff, Sam, that's just how it goes.”

 

“Why do you always have to be so suspicious?”

 

Dean cocked his eyebrows. “What, and you're not?”

 

Sam opened his mouth as if to say something, and then rolled his eyes, sitting back in his chair, resigned.

 

“What?”

 

“She—”

 

“Is she one of them?” Cas piped up from across the room, reading Sam's words before he could even speak them. “Lily Francis?”

 

Sam looked pointedly into his notebook. He didn't want to think about her. Knowing that they'd probably be taking off tomorrow just made his chest ache. “I don't know,” he said. “Maybe. But she clearly didn't want to talk about it.”

 

A small silence fell; Dean and Cas looked at him, and then at each other, and Dean laughed, quietly.

 

Sam's attention snapped back up. “What?”

 

“Sammy's got a crush,” Dean said, turning on his heel to wander back into the bathroom, grinning. Cas smiled softly and busied himself toying with the corner of the comforter.

 

“I—God,” Sam said, protest falling flat. It was useless. Dean was chuckling to himself in the mirror and Cas clearly wasn't coming to his defense.

 

Not that there was anything to defend, as it was basically true.

 

“What's the plan for tomorrow?” Sam said thinly, pushing the subject of Lily Francis away, closing his press notebook with an indignant snap.

 

“Well, I'd say we find one of these—Riverlands people, or whatever,” Dean said, voice echoing on the bathroom tile. Sam heard him spit out his toothpaste and he came back out, rubbing at his mouth. “But they're a pretty secretive bunch around here?”

 

“Apparently.”

 

“Well, if it stuck here,” Cas said, looking up at Dean with wide blue eyes as he passed him on the bed, “I'm sure it stuck somewhere else. Further down the river.”

 

“You think?”

 

“Faith has a tendency to do that,” Cas said.

 

“So. Move on, then?” Dean circumvented the bed and claimed the left side, flopping down on the pillows with a grunt. “Where'd this preacher board the steamboat? Maybe he left something there.”

 

“Lily didn't say,” Sam mumbled, rubbing at his eyes. “Maybe Bobby knows.”

 

“We'll call him tomorrow. Let's get some shut-eye.”

 

 

* * *

 

Try as he might, that night, Sam couldn't sleep. He stared at the ceiling as the thin moonlight drifted over it in a slow blue arc, thinking about the dim lights in Marlene's on the square, elbows on the sticky Formica tabletop, listening to Lily laugh. Kissing her. He hadn't been on a proper date like that, under any conditions, under any guise, in years. Johnny Cash was thrumming gently in the back of his mind, on loop.

 

He sighed, running a hand over his face, rearranging himself under the covers to try and get comfortable. He ended up on his side, facing the other bed, and lay there, looking at the hills and valleys of the two bodies across the way.

 

Sam could just make out the thin lines of Castiel's shoulder-blades under his T-shirt, and the shadow of Dean's hand resting in the curve of the angel's neck, as if it had stilled there in the process of caressing a cheek. They were facing one another, both sound asleep. He could hear their breathing like the push and pull of tide.

 

He wondered, briefly, what had happened in his absence to make them so easy with each other the whole night. Certainly, Sam had had suspicions, for a long time—he just didn't think it was his place to ask.

 

He wondered if it was something in the fairgrounds air that had made them like that. Had made him like that, with Lily, in the band tent. There had been some atmosphere of lovely reverence, he thought, in the movement of people through the midway, the turning of the Ferris wheel, the sway of Lily's body, the tug of Dean and Castiel towards one another, all night.

 

Sam lay in the dark, listening to the breathing of the others, and closed his eyes, trying to push Lily Francis' face into the back of his mind with Johnny Cash. Eventually his lungs fell into rhythm with theirs, and he drifted off, thinking of Ferris wheel lights, thinking of peach blossoms.

 

 

* * *

 

The phone call to Bobby the next morning was brief; judging from the faces Sam pulled while the phone was tucked next to his ear, Bobby wasn't in a good mood, and was probably busy. He gave Sam the name of a town in Iowa—Dubois—once a river port, now a river crossing, situated on the Mississippi, where Amos Porter had boarded _The Elaine_ more than a hundred years ago, and then hung up without so much as a goodbye.

 

They walked across the square to Marlene's for breakfast and were just tucking in to ridiculous portions on all sides when small footsteps approached their booth from behind and Cas looked up from his food at the newcomer.

 

Sam caught his gaze and turned.

 

“Lily,” he said, surprised.

 

She gave him a small smile and then jerked her head to the side; Sam moved over on his side of the booth and Lily slid in beside him.

 

“Hi,” she said, in the direction of Dean and Cas.

 

“Hello,” Cas said.

 

“Lily Francis, right?” Dean said, foregoing a hello, wiping grease from his hash browns from his fingers.

 

“That's me,” she said. She looked uncomfortable—perhaps it was because she'd come upon them uninvited; none of them could tell. “You're—Sam's brother, yeah?”

 

“Dean,” he said. “This is Cas.”

 

Cas nodded slightly to her. He was looking at her in the way he looked at everyone—with wide eyes and for too long at a time—and she fidgeted, turning her attention to Sam.

 

“Look, I couldn't stop thinking about what you were asking me last night,” she said, hastily, in a hush. “About Amos Porter and Riverlands people.”

 

At once, all three hunters sat up a little straighter; Dean leaned forward, Sam looked startled, and Cas continued watching Lily's face, as if he were trying to puzzle out what lay behind it.

 

Lily huffed, tugging at her ponytail. Her hand fled back to her mouth immediately, picking at her lip, her old habit. “Okay—I'll tell you what I know about it. It's not much and I don't know what you boys are even looking for, so I don't know how much help I'll be. But you'll be hard pressed to find anyone else who'll tell you about it. At least in this town.”

 

The waitress came by to offer Lily coffee, and when she'd brought it, Lily held the mug between her hands and looked into it for a moment. The trio watched her expectantly, waiting for whatever she had to say.

 

“When I was growing up it was just a story. Or bits and pieces of one,” she said, rolling her shoulders back and forth. Her voice was low, as if she didn't want to be overheard. “Nothing whole, ever. My family's— _very_ Protestant, let's put it that way. We never really had much truck with Riverlands people.”

 

“How many are there, here?” Sam asked.

 

Lily shrugged. “Maybe ten or twelve. Not even enough to be called a community. They don't have services, they don't get together, but you know who's who. You can tell their children apart because they'll walk around with stars drawn in their palms.” She held up her hand to demonstrate, tracing an asterisk into her skin with a pinkie fingernail, and then cupped her coffee mug again. “I never knew what that was about.”

 

“So you aren't one of them,” Castiel said.

 

She glanced at him, saw the intensity of his gaze, tossed her head uncomfortably. “Not technically, no. Like I said, my family never approved of them. They're a weird quiet bunch.”

 

“What's the story, then?” Dean asked, around a mouthful of food; Cas gently nudged him to close his mouth.

 

“I never heard the whole thing. But you were asking about Amos Porter—whatever he preached was coming out of a book, or at least that's what everyone says. It was a love story.” She looked between all three of them, worrying her lip with her teeth, seeming to fight with something within herself. “I don't know much more of it than this: but it's something about a star who falls in love with a catfish.”

 

Something intangible seemed to twitch in the air, then, over the sticky Formica table and the half-finished plates of food, an almost insignificant chill that scrambled over their shoulders. With mild surprise Cas felt the sensation of goosebumps, but looked down at his bare forearms to see nothing there.

 

“Weird love story,” Dean said, trying for sarcasm, but his joking tone fell flat. Suddenly he found himself less hungry than he'd thought. He pushed his plate away and crossed his arms on the tabletop. “And this is a religion?”

 

“More or less,” Lily said. “More of a parable, maybe. Just something people believe, you know.” She began to pick at her fingernails. “Look—I don't know what you guys want with whatever Amos Porter was preaching, but it's old news. _Really_ old news. And there's nothing here for it, anymore. Just a few crazy people with their stars and their fish.”

 

“Amos Porter went preaching on a steamboat,” Sam said. He was watching her intently, as if he wanted to put his arm around her, but wasn't sure if it were apropos or not. “Does the Mississippi have anything to do with what he believed?”

 

“Oh yeah,” Lily said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She laughed, a little anxiously. “If you ask a Riverlander they'll tell you that the whole reason our orchard even grows is because we irrigate with river water, straight from the Mississippi. That that's the reason we've got such _miraculous growth._ ”

 

The three men looked at one another. There it was, that word again—miraculous.

 

“Why are they called Riverlands people?” Cas asked, quietly, in the silence that followed.

 

“After his book,” Lily said. “As far as I know. There aren't any copies that exist anymore that I know of, but if you believe what they say about Porter, he kept that book on him like it was a Bible. The Riverlands Hymnal, he called it.” She exhaled, and leaned back in the booth seat, taking a long sip of black coffee. “And that's all I know about the subject. God's honest.”

 

“No—that's a huge help, Lily, thank you,” Sam said, and she smiled at him. The tension was gone from her shoulders now that she'd said what she'd come to say. “What—made you change your mind?”

 

“Honestly? The fact that you even asked last night—no one asks about that anymore,” she said, looking at him, her dark eyes searching his face, or perhaps memorizing it. “I thought—if mysterious people are coming through our little place, asking big questions like that...call me stupid. But it sounded like an adventure. And I wanted in.”

 

Cas glanced at Dean to see a look on his face that Cas clearly knew to be his _look at these infatuated idiots_ face, usually reserved for couples engaged in public displays of affection. He smiled. Sam and the Francis girl were looking at each other like they never wanted to stop looking. Cas knew how that felt—it was the urge that made him long to stare at Dean the way he did, the instinct that he always seemed to unconsciously hope would draw Dean's gaze back to him in return.

 

“Anyway.” Lily pulled her purse up over her shoulder, clearing her throat. “I—should be going, I'm supposed to be helping at the orchard today...I just thought you three would be here before you headed out. Thought I'd try to catch you.”

 

She slid out of the booth, pulling down her shirt, and Sam followed perhaps too hastily, mumbling “I'll walk you out,” and Lily smiled at Dean and Cas, running fingers through her hair.

 

“I hope you find whatever you're looking for,” she said. “I hope it's big and grand and all the stuff you want.”

 

She gave them a hesitant wave as she turned, and Sam followed her out towards the front, hand hovering near the small of her back, as if he was afraid to touch her.

 

“Crush the size of Texas,” Dean mumbled, watching them go.

 

“I think it's sweet,” Cas said. “Sam looks so lonely sometimes.”

 

“Alright, soap opera. He's never gonna see her again. Never lasts.”

 

Cas hummed in his throat, neither a sound of agreement nor dissent.

 

Through the window of the restaurant, past the painted letters of the name _Marlene's,_ he saw Sam and Lily pause on the sidewalk in front of a huge rusted truck that he assumed was hers. They were talking, hands in their pockets, and Sam leaned down briefly to kiss her cheek before she touched his face, just gently, and then swung up into the cab of her truck to rumble out of the parking lot.

 

Dean hadn't seen; he was busy looking through his wallet for the least-suspicious fake card he had, and Sam came back in, setting off the little bell at the front. He looked a little sad, but Cas said nothing as he slid back into the booth.

 

“So,” Sam said. “What now?”

 

“Head out to Dubois,” Dean said. “Except now we have an idea of what we're looking for.”

 

In unison they went up front to pay, and then filed out of Marlene's. The sun was just rising in earnest, painting everything in thin yellow light, and Greenacre was waking up along with the light, neon _open_ signs coming to life down the streets, traffic lining up at the lights around the square.


	3. Dubois, IA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “...however much you resist them, the waters will return; that the land sinks; silt collects; that something in nature wants to go back."

Dubois was one of those places that Dean swore they’d been to before—he just couldn’t remember when. From out of the swathe of deep green trees rose a dozen church spires into the blue. Had they not been arguing about where the next interchange was, they might have heard the bells tolling from the white capped towers, vibrating through the air, mingling with the sounds of cicadas and sighing traffic.

 

“You _sure_ we haven’t been here before?” Dean asked, for the fiftieth time, glancing out the windows at block after block of picturesque small-town American wholesomeness. Flags hung from every lamppost, ruffling slightly in the breezes that passed down the brick streets – couples with strollers ambled down the wide sidewalks or perched on park benches outside ice cream parlors and cafes, feeding messy faced toddlers or chatting with elderly people. Cheerful storefronts lined the road—not the worn-out signs of Greenacre, but freshly retouched advertisements for old-fashioned candy stores and florists and bridal boutiques. In the distance the bridge loomed over the water, sunlight winking off the cars as they passed between the steel beams.

 

They had taken a wrong exit and ended up dumped in the heart of the town, stopping and starting at the numerous traffic signals, searching for the road that would lead them to the river crossing.

 

“I don’t know – I can’t remember,” Sam said shortly, struggling to read the street signs over Cas’ shoulder in the front seat.

 

“Your blood sugar low?” Dean teased, to let off some of his own frustration, easing up on the gas to avoid bumping the car in front of him. Sam scowled, sitting back, defiantly silent.

 

“Are you hungry again?” Cas said, turning his head to look not at Sam, but Dean.

 

The hunter adjusted his hands on the wheel, face pulling into a grimace. “No.” Dean hesitated, shifting in his seat. “What makes you say that?”

 

Cas narrowed his eyes a fraction before turning back to stare out the windshield.

 

“You get irritable when you’re hungry,” he commented dryly.

 

“Oh, _do_ I?” came the indignant reply.

 

Cas couldn’t shake the feeling that Dean’s sudden spike in appetite wasn’t a coincidence. They’d been stopping twice as often as they usually did – even Sam had complained with his incredulous _“seriously?”_ when Dean had declared a craving for onion rings an hour after leaving Greenacre. It could have been stress, true, but Dean had been stressed before and not reacted like this. It was so out of the ordinary. Dean was usually the practical kind; you didn’t stop till it was absolutely necessary, trying to cover as much ground as you could between stops. Dean would often put off eating for hours if they had a long way to go, forgetting about his hunger in the drone of driving, lost in his tapes or a conversation or the road.

 

Yet Dean had eaten not long ago, and he was already shaking his leg restlessly, cursing at the other drivers and reacting more aggressively when they went too slow for his tastes. Cas considered their predicament and dragged his tongue along the bottom row of his teeth, wondering if it was good to suggest another stop or not.

 

“Dean?” Cas asked again, and Dean nodded, on autopilot.

 

“I’m starving,” Dean muttered, finally, shaking his head to clear it. “Why the fuck am I so hungry?”

 

“You’re kidding,” Sam groaned, head lolling on the seat. He rubbed his eyes and covered his face in exasperation. “Dean, seriously, let’s just get back on 52 and get a room first and we’ll eat later.”

 

“Sam, I’m gonna eat the steering wheel here in a few seconds!” Dean barked, all his attention suddenly turned towards the prospect of food. “We’ll just swing into some place—”

 

“Dean.” Cas placed his hand on Dean’s leg and he nearly jumped out of his skin, his gaze moving between Cas and the windshield. “The ramp for 52 is right up there. Just get back on like Sam said, and we’ll stop, alright?” he said quietly, and Dean nodded, flicking the turn signal on and sliding into the lane.

 

Pacified for the moment, Sam pressed his forehead to the window, on the lookout for motels and some kind of food for his garbage disposal of an older brother. They were outside of Dubois now—the town fell away surprisingly quickly behind them—and the skyline had become obscured by the trees and hills, the car dipping into a valley, a cluster of highway accommodations coming into view.

 

“What are you doing, Dean? We can’t afford Holiday Inn,” Sam grumbled as Dean crossed four lanes of traffic to make the upcoming exit, the engine revving as he accelerated, cutting between cars.

 

“There’s a Mexican place,” Dean said and Sam rolled his eyes so hard they might have fallen out of his head.

 

“You seriously couldn’t wait for a few more exits?”

 

“Nope,” Dean said. His eyes dropped to where Castiel's hand lay on his leg for a moment, and he worked his jaw, as if unsure what to do about it, and then his gaze moved back to the road.

 

Cas rubbed at Dean’s thigh where his hand still lay, thumb dragging over the denim, trying to not worry about all of it. It must simply have been stress. There was a lot they didn’t know, and Cas was all too familiar with how much Dean hated going into things blind.

 

Dean and Sam snapped at each other a few more times, but Dean had already decided and there wasn’t much to be said about it. Cas stared up at the sign for the restaurant as they pulled off the highway and into the lot: pale blue with white lettering in elaborate script. _Abuela’s: Authentic Mexican Cuisine._

 

“Yeah, I’m sure it’s _real_ authentic,” Sam muttered.

 

It wasn’t very big and the outside courtyard was thick with bright flowers and a bench. The blooms were huge and vibrant, cheerfully standing out against the tan face of the building, nodding their heads in the hot breeze. A fountain tucked in among the blossoms misted the air, haloing the bushes with a haze of rainbows. It was a nice place, nicer than a quick bite to eat.

 

Furthermore, it was deserted. They had arrived before any kind of predictable lunch rush and the sound of them opening the doors seemed obtrusive to the surrounding quiet. Dean stepped up onto the curb without waiting, making his way towards the doors, and Sam sighed something about how they were wasting daylight. They could have been searching the river-walk by now, or seeing if there were any artifacts of Amos Porter’s river boat left behind, or interviewing a historian at the museum for information on the enigmatic preacher, or doing _some_ kind of legwork, at least. Instead they were stuck filling the black hole that was Dean’s stomach and not making any progress.

 

“I’m concerned,” Cas said simply, after Sam was done unloading, watching Dean open the door and then stop, remembering his brother and his angel and holding it open. “It's a little odd.”

 

Sam felt a twinge of guilt surface.

 

“Yeah,” he replied after a moment, his annoyance dissipating. It was _really_ odd. He’d been too busy pitching his fit to think about how weird Dean was acting. His brother was a veritable vacuum of food on any given normal day, but this was bordering on ridiculous.

 

Dean pointed out that the sign inside said to seat themselves when his two companions reached the door. They bundled into a booth, as usual, Sam sitting in the middle of his side, studying his brother closely. Dean didn’t seem particularly disturbed or upset. He merely seemed impatient and hungry, unrolling the paper napkin of silverware beside him and tapping it on the table.

 

“Look at those pictures,” Sam said, trying awkwardly for conversation, staring at the back wall of the cantina. It was covered in photographs of what appeared to be a family. Many of them were of groups of people crammed together outside of squat Mexican houses, their black and white faces smiling shyly at the camera; in the background a river was just slightly visible. One, a larger picture, was of a woman sitting in an old chair, a fringed shawl hanging off of her, a long braid hanging over her shoulder like a fat silver fish.

 

Cas tilted his head slightly, mapping the old woman’s wrinkled face with his eyes from afar. Perhaps it was the distance, or the photo, but her eyes were strange. There were secrets buried there, but her Mona Lisa smile was unwilling to tell any of them.

 

“Lo siento, I’m sorry!”

 

The three of them looked up to see a girl hurrying towards them, tying her apron around her round hips, her face flushed pink with embarrassment.

 

“I am so sorry for the wait!” she said quickly, her accent coloring her words. She stopped midway between the kitchen and their table and snapped her fingers, remembering something. She jogged to the front counter to grab menus and then rushed back over, pushing the menus in front of them, fighting to pull her notebook out of her apron pocket and brush her curls out of her face at the same time.

 

“I am so sorry,” she said for the third time, staring at them with her round chocolate colored eyes. “I was taking my break and I didn’t hear you come in, please forgive me, I am not usually so thoughtless!”

 

“It’s nothing, sweetheart,” Dean soothed, and she snapped her eyes to him, deflating with gratitude that he wasn’t angry.

 

“What can start you with? Drinks? We, well—it isn’t quite happy hour but I will give you those prices if you would like something like that? We have very good margaritas.” She paused, getting ahead of herself and let the pad rest against her thigh. “I’m Rosa, by the way, and I’m talking too fast again.”

 

Dean smiled at her, endeared by her enthusiasm and her sweet, heart-shaped face.

 

She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, even younger than Yann. Her long dark hair was dusty with fly-aways; she stopped to drag it behind her ears every few seconds, and her uniform was slightly askew, but she had kind eyes. The same kind of eyes as the old woman in the picture, Cas noted, watching her as she jotted down Dean’s order for a Coke and Sam’s for water with lemon.

 

“And you?” she said, waiting for Cas.

 

“Tea, please,” Cas answered, and she scribbled it down, nodding to herself.

 

“Tomas will have those out for you – would you like chips too?”

 

“Sure,” Dean said, and she smiled brightly with relief that things were going well. Dean wondered if she was new, working here.

 

“I will give you a few minutes, then?” she asked, gesturing at their menus, and Sam agreed with her, the three of them opening them up as she left, the kitchen doors swinging behind her.

 

Dean glanced over at Cas. He had leaned slightly into Dean’s side, their feet nudging together under the table. The angel's fingers curled over his chin as he tried to decide, index finger rubbing back and forth right under his lower lip.

 

Dean knew he was staring at Cas' mouth, but Sam wasn’t looking, and he indulged.

 

They hadn’t really kissed since the fair. They hadn’t had an opportunity, or maybe the courage, to do so. They simply existed in the fact that they had, and silently and mutually called that enough for the moment. The tip of Dean’s tongue wetted his lips and then without warning Cas glanced at him, eyes catching his. They darted to Dean’s mouth, tongue still poking out, and the angel smirked, returning to his menu.

 

Dean cleared his throat and looked away, ears hot.

 

There was a clatter behind the kitchen door, louder than usual in the empty echoing restaurant, and all three looked that way as it swung open and a boy who couldn't have been older than thirteen came out with a wobbling tray in his hands and toddled towards their table, apparently very unsure of where to put his feet.

 

“My name is Tomas and I will—be your—” the boy huffed, tongue rolling out the mechanical greeting as he put down the tray on their table— “Waiter today. Are you ready to order.” It came out as less of a question and more of a statement.

 

He had the same round face and chocolate eyes as Rosa, and Dean could tell they were siblings. He felt the picture of the old woman on the wall boring holes into his neck with her eyes and wondered if they were her children, or grandchildren.

 

Sam placed his order, and they watched the boy fumble with his pen and pad, tapping the pen against his teeth while he tried to puzzle out the abbreviations for things. After he'd figured out Castiel's order as well, he looked up at Dean, and his entire face froze.

 

“I'll have the Ma—” Dean said, before he realized that the boy Tomas was staring at him, and that Cas and Sam had assumed positions of unmoving confusion at the table with him. He looked between all of them and then back at Tomas.

 

“You okay, kid?” he said, warily.

 

“Oh my God,” Tomas said, his hands going limp, pen falling out of his hand. He clutched his pad to his chest and took a step back, eyes glued to Dean's face and wide as dinner plates. “You're—”

 

Cas looked at Dean, and Dean shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I'm...?”

 

Tomas muttered something hastily under his breath in Spanish that Dean couldn't catch, shaking his head a little, looking entirely confused, and a little shell-shocked.

 

“Look, is there a problem?” Dean asked. There was a weight settling on his gut that had nothing to do with hunger. In fact, the hollow feeling in his stomach seemed to have curled away completely.

 

“Rosa!” Tomas called, over his shoulder, and without another word of explanation wheeled around and darted back into the kitchen. Dean could hear the sounds of raised voices in Spanish and English, plates and dishes clattering, and edged back into the corner of the booth, trying to ignore Sam and Castiel's bewildered stares.

 

“Do we—did we know him?” Sam asked, under his breath.

 

“I don't think so.”

 

“Maybe I was wrong? Maybe we worked a case here?”

 

“I've never seen that kid in my life, Sam—”

 

“Did you hear what he called you?” Cas said, his voice breaking the awkward pall like a sliver of ice, and the brothers looked at him.

 

“Dude, I don't speak Spanish, you know that—”

 

“Catfish,” Castiel said. His voice was small and his eyes were very wide, and very confused. “He called you a catfish.”

 

“He’s just a kid,” Sam whispered, as if it mattered.

 

Dean was frozen. He hadn’t moved an inch since Cas had pinned him down under his stare. His skin prickled, every nerve ending crackling and the hair on his arms was standing on end. His stomach gave a lurch and a wave of nausea followed. He felt, for an instant, like something was rolling inside of him, and then, abruptly, it stopped, just as the door to the kitchen slammed open.

 

“Mira, Rosa, _mira_!” Tomas was saying, pulling Rosa out into the dining room, pointing at their table. She was struggling to push him back into the kitchen, her words muffled as she tried to keep her voice quiet, or force Tomas away, or both.

 

Tomas persisted. “Rosa, _mira_!”

 

“No son ellos!” she said loudly, and the younger boy shrank back, stumbling through the swinging door. She rushed after him, still going on. For one moment, it was silent, and then Tomas let out a sob followed by a harsh shushing sound and Rosa’s milky voice soothing him for a moment.

 

The tension at the table was palpable. They sat stock still, their eyes glued on the kitchen.

 

Cas knew they should leave. They should have left as soon as things started getting weird, but he couldn’t have moved if he tried. They were all plastered to the booth, waiting in the agitated silence.

 

Dean’s mind was blank except for that one muddy thought flicking back and forth through the murky recesses of his brain.

 

_He called you a catfish._

 

Rosa pushed through the door alone, and the sound of it thumping against the frame shattered the air. She carried a round tray with glasses on it, her face red, hustling to them again, steps small and careful. Without a word she balanced the tray on one arm and set the drinks down, not looking at their faces. She didn't seem to notice that there were drinks at their table already.

 

“Is something wrong with him?”

 

She wouldn’t meet Dean’s eyes, embarrassed by his words.

 

“No!” she said quickly, fiddling with the empty tray, staring at the floor. “No, it’s—it’s nothing, Tomas, he is crazy, that’s all!” She was talking fast again, her fingers clenched around the brown plastic. She shifted under Dean’s stare.

 

“He seemed pretty worked up about something,” Dean said, voice a little lower, a little more demanding, than it should have been. “You sure it was nothing?”

 

Rosa faltered for a minute, eyes glued to the tile, afraid of looking into their faces.

 

“Tommy is my brother. He’s harmless, he’s just – he’s just crazy,” she whispered. “He goes on and on about Abuela's stories, and bad things happen, he embarrasses himself.”

 

“What kind of bad things?” Sam said immediately after she’d spoken. Rosa shrugged.

 

“These kinds,” she mumbled. “He scares people.”

 

“Is that your grandmother?” Cas said, and she finally let her eyes lift to him and then to the picture on the wall, the one he'd pointed to. The woman on the wall smiled on, eyes soft.

 

“Yes. She told us stories. The little ones. When she died—” Rosa shook her head, still staring at her grandmother’s serene face. “—Tommy started worrying about turning into _el siluro_ …it's nothing, it's really nothing.”

 

“That’s what he said,” Cas interrupted, and Rosa glanced back to the table, but only at Cas. The angel’s brow was furrowed. “ _Siluro_. Catfish. That’s what he called Dean.”

 

Rosa looked stricken, and Cas looked at Dean, and her eyes followed. She looked up, finally, glancing shyly through her lashes at first.

 

“I’m so terribly sorry,” she began. “It’s – it’s not an insult. Tommy isn’t being mean. He’s just confused. The catfish, he is…”

 

Her voice dropped off and she lifted her head more fully to stare at Dean. Her eyes widened and the tray slipped out of her hands and clattered to the floor.

 

“Oh,” she whispered, her arms still bent at her sides, fingers curled around an invisible edge. She didn’t blink, and Dean tried to pry his eyes away from her own, but they held onto him hard. She brought one coffee-colored hand to her mouth. “Oh,” she breathed again, and he watched in horror as her eyes went glassy and brimming.

 

“Is this some kind of a joke?” Dean demanded, and she shook her head. “What's the matter?”

 

“God.” Her voice was high and reedy, and a tear spilled over the edge of her eyelash. “My God.”

 

“What’s _wrong_ with you?” Dean said again, voice coming up higher than he'd meant, his heart thumping in his chest—and she cried out, her hands darting forward to grab his arm. Dean tried to stand but it was impossible in the booth; he succeeded in knocking over Cas’ tea, the table shaking as he jolted at her touch. “What the hell?!”

 

“Have you asked him?” she said, her eyes suddenly desperate, as if some dam inside her had burst. “Are you going to the river with him? Is that what you’re doing?”

 

“I don’t know what you’re _talking_ about!” Dean said, trying to twist out of her hands. Cas bristled beside him, his eyes darkening protectively, and Sam was already moving to stand, slipping out of the booth and coming closer, halting when Tomas came tearing out of the back, nearly knocking over a chair in the process of his sprint. His long skinny arms wrapped around Rosa’s middle and he pulled.

 

“Rosa!”

 

The tray skidded across the floor in the scuffle. He managed to pry her hands off of Dean and she cried out again, sinking halfway to her knees.

 

“He doesn’t know!” she shouted, still reaching for Dean, moving to break free of Tomas’ arms. “Someone has to tell him!”

 

“Dean,” Cas said sharply. His whole body had turned, gone electric and dark with instinct to protect, and he was edging out of the booth, looking startled. Dean hauled himself up so they could get the hell out of there.

 

Rosa’s finger snagged his leg and he stumbled to a stop, stood staring down at her bent body, watching her wet face crumple in something like agony.

 

“Let go,” Cas said, threat rumbling in the back of his voice. Behind the kitchen door the cooks and waiters were crowding into the threshold, staring at them, murmuring to themselves.

 

To Cas’ surprise she shook her head.

 

“ _Please!_ ” she begged, holding Dean’s leg. “Please remember! If you don’t you’ll flood everything!”

 

“Get the hell off me, lady, I don’t understand!” Dean snapped, voice faltering, feeling more scared than he had in a long time. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

 

“You’ll flood everything,” Rosa wept. “Don’t let your heart be so heavy! You’ll turn into a catfish all over again!”

 

He had never seen someone cry like that before.

 

She gasped and shivered and choked, Tomas standing idly on, watching the two of them. The punch of the look on her face in his gut almost made Dean want to double over.

 

The next thing he knew, Sam was yanking Rosa’s hands off of him and Cas had grabbed his arm and pulled so hard his shoulder burned, ignoring as best they could the small anguished sounds the girl was making behind them.

 

They stumbled out of the cantina and into the harsh sunlight, Cas dragging Dean to the car with the efficient strength of the soldier he was. He opened the door and shoved Dean into the back and climbed in after him, Sam jogging out of the front and into the driver’s seat.

 

“Keys,” he demanded, and Dean handed them to him with shaking fingers, and the engine roared as Sam pulled out of the parking lot and back onto 52, paying no attention to the speed limit.

 

“What the fuck was that about!?” Sam demanded, frantic. The sound of their heartbeats in the car was almost audible even over the roar of the road. Cas was twisted to look out the back window at the vanishing cantina, and Sam's eyes were fixed on Dean in the rear-view mirror.

 

Dean remained silent.

 

“Dean!”

 

“I don’t know!” Dean choked, coming to life again. “I don’t.” He shook his head.

 

Cas’ eyes were glued on Dean. The hunter's face was white as a sheet and his hands were shaking.

 

“Did she hurt you?” he rasped, mouth dry, and Dean shook his head again, hastily.

 

“No—” he paused. “No. No she didn’t.”

 

“Dean, what the hell is going on?” Sam said again, and Dean was unable to find words.

 

“She said I’d turn into a catfish,” he muttered. “What the hell does that mean?”

 

Sam was heading back into Dubois. They weren’t going to stay. They’d go somewhere else. Get across the river. Get far away from that breed of crazy, whatever it was.

 

Dean remained still. Cas wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pressed his cheek into the hot skin on the back of Dean’s neck.

 

“You’re burning up,” he murmured, and Dean swallowed.

 

“I just need a second.”

 

Cas stayed there, holding him as a few more trembles rattled through him.

 

Sam drove them through Dubois and onto some empty country road. Dean remained bent against the front seat, forehead pressed into its back, trying to puzzle out what had just happened. Of all the millions of restaurants, of all the people in the country—those two kids—they'd only stopped for lunch. They'd just stopped for lunch and Amos Porter's crazy had followed them straight there from Greenacre, it seemed.

 

“I'm gonna be sick,” he said, feeling Cas' arm heavy around his shoulders. Sam glanced back over the seat, and Dean weakly smacked the leather separating them, barking “I'm serious, Sam, I'm gonna be sick—”

 

Sam swerved into the gravel on the side of the road, and Cas popped the door open, stepping out onto the asphalt. Dean followed, swaying on his feet, and Cas watched as he rounded the Impala and stumbled down the ditch-bank out of sight, presumably to retch into the trees.

 

Cas leaned on the Impala's trunk, sighing, head dropping between his shoulders. Sam came to stand beside him, looking back down the road, half-expecting the two children to come running down the street after them.

 

“I take it that's never happened before,” Cas said, drawing a hand over his face. He turned his body to follow Sam's gaze.

 

“Yeah. No.” Sam looked more disturbed than Castiel had ever seen him. “That was fucking weird, man.”

 

“They looked like they'd seen a ghost,” Cas said. His head was still reeling, a strange chill sitting against his arms. “They called him a catfish, Sam.”

 

“I know.”

 

“That can't be a coincidence.”

 

“Yeah.” Sam shifted, feet crunching in the gravel. “That's what I'm worried about.”

 

Cas gnawed at his lower lip. The girl's shrieks and pleas were echoing in his head like some sick skipping record. Rivers and heavy hearts, floods—catfish. Of all things.

 

Dean came back up the ditch, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. Sam turned back towards the front, and Cas moved to open the door, but Dean didn't even look at them. Instead he walked into the middle of the road, the long empty road, staring back the way they'd come, looking ready to fidget out of his skin.

 

“Dean, let's go,” Sam said.

 

Dean didn't respond. He paced back and forth, a few steps across the width of the street, pulling at his mouth. Cas could see a shudder under his body waiting to break. Dean had surpassed the stage of being freaked out—he was angry now, confused and angry, because anything that didn't make sense, anything like that that came for _him,_ was cause for anger.

 

“What the _hell_ was that?!” he shouted, throwing his arm back towards the highway, turning on Sam and Castiel as if they had any more answers than he did.

 

“Dean—”

 

“Shut up, Sam, look—a werewolf _comes to us_ and lives through a _silver knife_ ,” he shouted, pacing back and forth again, gesticulating wildly. “Tells us about a bunch of fucking—miracles we're supposed to believe are _good things_? Demons acting crazy? We haven't had a real job in ages—sends us off looking for some _book_ that some _nutjob_ preached up and down however many years ago, and now—now we've got some _kids,_ in some totally random restaurant, having fits, calling me things, what—? What am I supposed to make of that, Sam?”

 

“I don't know—just calm down, we'll call Bobby, we'll—”

 

“This is _weird as shit,_ Sam, I'm not gonna sit on my ass waiting for Bobby to dig up info that might not even be there—I just got attacked by a teenage girl, okay, telling me I'm some character in some fucking Victorian love story? Some _catfish_?”

 

“At least come out of the road,” Cas said, interrupting Dean's tirade. Dean stopped pacing and stood there over the yellow lines, shaking his head, clenching his jaw. He looked fit to burst. “And we'll find a place to spend the night and figure this out.”

 

“This is not about me,” Dean said, a sharp drop into clarity, a snap. He shook his head, firmly. “I am not— _whatever_. This is not about me. I'm not gonna let something else big and bad and awful be about me.”

 

“Come out of the road,” Castiel said, quietly.

 

And this time, Dean listened; he sent one last long look off back the way they'd come, and then came to the car, hands in defiant fists. He shrugged off the touch Cas offered and clambered into the back seat, crossing his arms not out of bitterness but almost to keep himself inside his own body, and Sam and Cas exchanged looks of worry before Sam slid back behind the wheel, and Cas slid into the back again.

 

 

* * *

 

They drove aimlessly east, having doubled back through Dubois, and stopped at a place truly without location, a motel between towns with a sign so weathered it could hardly be read. It was quiet, out among farmland and rolling fields of summer grain, and for the silence Dean was thankful. The entire building was one story, ten rooms—normally a place they'd have passed right by on any other night, in search of better accommodation, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and by the time evening was falling they were all sick of being cramped in the car with Dean's anger and confusion thickening the air, and were glad of the sunset parking lot.

 

Cas offered to find food for the night after several exchanged glances with Sam confirmed his suspicion that none of them wanted to seek out another restaurant any time soon. Dean mumbled that he wasn't hungry, but Cas went anyway, slipping out of the motel room air in the rush of wings that neither brother had heard in months.

 

It wasn't often that he reminded them of his angelhood, these days, or used his power in any way. _Falling by omission,_ Castiel called it, sometimes.

 

A few minutes after he'd gone, in the stifling silence that leached into the room, Dean mumbled something about taking a shower and vanished into the claustrophobic bathroom.

 

Sam watched the door click closed behind him and sighed. He pulled out his laptop, press notebook, cell phone, dialed Bobby and set him on speaker, sat down to puzzle some things out as best he could, he hoped, before either his brother or the angel came back. It only took him a few moments to pull up an Internet radio station on very low volume, to drown out the quiet, to push down the sound of Rosa's shouts in his mind while Bobby mumbled on the phone and the hiss of Dean's shower crept from under the bathroom door.

 

 

* * *

 

Though the motel bath stall looked less-than-sanitary, and he'd only taken a shower that morning before leaving Greenacre, Dean sank down onto the floor as soon as the water was on and steam was filling the room, leaving swirls of mist on the glass paneling and the mirror.

 

He felt dirty, and he wasn't sure why. Dirty and dry. He felt as if he'd been working outside the entire day in the heat of the sun, felt as though there was mud beneath his nails when he knew for a fact that there wasn't. He knew that he'd spent the day driving and eating and being accosted by strange young girls and their strange young brothers and shouting in the road. There hadn't been heat to feel. There hadn't been work to do. But he felt it.

 

His mind was a jumble, and he knew it. Cas had insisted they'd work things through that night but he didn't see how they could. Only this morning the entire case—if it even _was_ a case—had been detached, one step removed. Just another series of strange events. Just another lead to chase and at its worst, maybe another Apocalypse, but he could handle an Apocalypse, he'd handled one before. They all had. But it had never come to them like this. It hadn't reared its head and claimed them halfway through.

 

The water was too hot, but Dean didn't move to turn it down.

 

Strange hunger and strange kids. The strange weight of Castiel's arm on his shoulders. What had she said about weight? _Don't let your heart get too heavy._ What was that supposed to mean?

 

It all had the stink to it of something huge and unfathomable, something orchestrating itself around them, just like everything else always had. Stalking them down. He couldn't shake that feeling, hadn't been able to shake it since Winona, and now here it was—using his name, his face, calling him a catfish, whatever the hell that meant. Confirming what he'd thought. It was bigger than just good crops and bad hunting.

 

What frightened him most, he thought, splashing water onto his face, blinking it back out of his eyes, was that it didn't have a name. It didn't have a driving force, no demons, no angels, no creatures tearing down the curtain between worlds. It just _was._ Something its own, waking up, pushing its way back into the world. Setting itself in motion. A few news clippings in a binder, a few whispered words, and it knew who he was.

 

Dean sat under the water, staring up at the steam floating against the ceiling, until Sam knocked on the door and his muffled voice announced that Cas was back.

 

He turned off the water, pulled on his clothes.

 

Cas had brought back fast food through the aether, and as soon as he saw Dean his face dropped into a look of concern. Dean waved off the question on the angel's face and gave him a tight smile, trying to quell the curling snake of confusion in his chest.

 

“I brought you something in case you get hungry later,” Cas said softly, gesturing absently to the third paper bag on the room dinette.

 

Dean nodded, but said nothing, and moved past him, towards the same far bed he always took at the end of a day's drive. Their hands caught, not enough to tangle but just enough to touch, as he passed, and Cas looked down, closing his fingers as if to keep the brush there, safe against his palm.


	4. Galilee, IL

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise.”

Dean sat up straight, the motel mattress creaking under him. Cas shifted, sighing, and Dean stared at the drapes. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there. He tensed, waiting.

 

“Dean.” Cas’ flat voice floated softly from somewhere beside him. A hand flopped out to swat blindly at Dean’s back, attempting to get his attention. “You have to sleep.”

 

“I can’t believe you can’t _hear_ them!” Dean hissed, throwing off the blankets and tripping over Sam’s shoes on the way to the window. He yanked the curtains aside and climbed halfway onto the air conditioning unit, one knee awkwardly digging into the dial. The machinery rattled begrudgingly at him, but Dean didn’t care. He turned his head and pressed his ear to the pane, straining to hear past the glass, eyes closing in concentration.

 

“ _Dean_ ,” Cas whispered, and Dean held out a hand to silence him.

 

“Come on, you little bastards,” he muttered. And there it was. _Again_. “Son of a bitch!”

 

“Dean.” Cas was sitting up now and rubbing his face tiredly. “Come back to bed.”

 

“You didn’t hear that?” Dean exclaimed, turning around in disbelief. “You really didn’t hear that? Tell the truth.”

 

“No,” Cas mumbled into his hand, hair sticking up in the front. “Dean, are you sure you’re not just imagining this?”

 

Dean stared at him through the dark and pointed towards the window and the parking lot.

 

“Either I’m going crazy, or I’m being haunted by birds, Cas. I’m not making this up. I can _hear_ them.” His hand jabbed at the air for emphasis and Cas’ shoulders sagged a little.

 

He believed Dean, he did. But, like everything else on this trip, it was just so odd. Bordering on comical, here, certainly, but still odd. Cas was beginning to think there were no witnesses to interview because the three of them had taken on that role themselves.

 

“What’s going on?” Sam slurred from his bed. Cas shushed him and he fell back among his pillows, huge arms curling around the one beneath his head.

 

“Dean, get away from the window...people are gonna think you’re a…” There was stifled yawn as Sam adjusted. “Pervert.”

 

“Can it, Sammy!”

 

“Dean.” Cas said his name for the umpteenth time in the past twenty four hours. His voice was the ever-patient vibration across the cramped room, never diverging from total tolerance. “I think you might be stressed.”

 

“Stressed? Yes!” Dean threw back, turning back to the window. “Yes! I am _very_ stressed, Cas!”

 

Sam groaned and buried his face in his pillow.

 

“Those little assholes are all over my car and they’re probably taking turns shitting on it and they won’t let me sleep and they’ve been following my every move since we stepped into this little slice of bumfuck nowhere! So _yes_ , I am a little stressed!”

 

Cas chose to remain silent, if only to buy Sam a little more time before he woke up again.

 

He had to admit that if he were in Dean’s position he’d probably be just as cross, if not more.

 

 

* * *

 

That day, they had stopped in Galilee, Illinois, following Yann’s binder of clippings to suss out something a little easier, but the crazy—whatever it was—just wasn't letting up. The town was peaceful; bigger than Greenacre, but still small. Not much going on, it seemed. All was quiet and sleepy and peaceable behind the cheerful sign proclaiming _Welcome to Galilee! The Town Where Nobody’s A Stranger!_

 

None of them had been very convinced of the warm salutation. They’d argued briefly about whether they should even stop. Dean grumbled that a river's hop across Dubois wasn’t nearly far enough, but Sam had insisted. They needed something with more concrete evidence, and more importantly, something natural, and Galilee's freak bird migration fit the bill.

 

“It’s probably just climate,” Sam had said, as they'd pulled through the one-way road that cut across the town square, attempting to pacify his disgruntled older brother. “Global warming or whatever.”

 

“Oh, so _now_ we start talking real world,” Dean had replied sourly, the accelerator whirring. “Why couldn’t it have been global warming, I don’t know, two towns ago? Before people started calling me a _fish_?”

 

“Let’s just see, okay?” Sam insisted, and the disagreement wore itself out.

 

Cas asked Sam about the history of the town to fill the silence, leaning over the front seat with his chin resting on the leather.

 

“Well, it’s got a huge flooding problem,” Sam said, Yann's binder sitting heavily on his lap, the map they'd been peering at discarded.

 

Dean twitched.

 

“Apparently the Galilee river port used to be a huge hub for Mississippi travelers – like one of the main places to stop between St. Paul and St. Louis. But then in 1828 this massive flood hit it…says here that steamboats were pretty much floating on the streets.”

 

He flipped a page.

“Your basic American town – a little bit of industry. Some factories came in the late eighties and before that it was all farming community. They used to mine a ton of lead, though – like a _ton._ They were even the first to ship it down the Mississippi. But it’s the flooding that changed everything. It’s been flooding every year since 1828…” He paused, mouth pressed firmly closed.

 

“What?” Dean said sharply.

 

Sam hesitated.

 

“…well, every year, except this one. Townspeople are wondering if that has anything to do with the birds, but I don't see how that could be true. They just – it’s like all the migrating kingfishers in the, uh. Entire country. Kind of dumped themselves here on the way to Canada. They just all stopped. Not the whole population, of course—it says not all of them migrate, but like. Hundreds.”

 

“I believe it,” Cas said.

 

It wasn't exactly some kind of enigmatic secret—every phone line in town, it seemed, was drooping heavy with kingfishers perching; they bristled out of the trees like feathery thorns, chattering and swooping and darting across the roads. At first he'd wondered if he'd be able to distinguish them from the usual birds, but it was fairly easy. They stuck out like sore thumbs.

 

“So a flooding pattern breaks tradition for the first time in—”

 

“One hundred and eighty-four years.”

 

“One hundred and eighty-four years. And what, some kind of biblical bird plague? That's all we've got to go on.” Dean sighed, rolling his shoulders anxiously as he pulled off the main road, following blue government signs that indicated lodging outside of the square. “Is there anything _remotely_ paranormal we could get our teeth into?”

 

“Not that I can see,” Sam said. “I checked all the usual things. No weird deaths or anything.”

 

“I'm sick of not treating things like a normal hunt,” Dean muttered. “I mean sure, this is weird, but when do I get to shoot something?”

 

“You'd rather be shooting things than relaxing a little? Following up on something that's not got death written all over it?”

 

“I'd rather not be operating under the impression that this has anything to do with _me_ ,” Dean mumbled, and Sam promptly went quiet.

 

There was the usual routine—booking a room, dropping off their things. Castiel was sure that it had become a fairly boring thing for the brothers, but he found it comforting, the sameness of it all. After the last few years of running and fighting and existing in a perpetual change with the Winchesters, it was nice to have some kind of order, he thought.

 

He hoped nothing horrifically strange would happen here. Dean had been on edge since booking it out of Dubois, and no amount of gentle touch from Cas had seemed to calm his nerves. He'd been cross and anxious, and of course neither Cas nor Sam could blame him. He'd been essentially attacked by two strangers. It was enough to rattle anybody.

 

At the same time the situation in Galilee seemed almost frustratingly simple. They had no names to follow up on, no idea of where to even begin, no idea, of course, if this had anything to do with the Bigger Problem at all. If there even was a Bigger Problem. Dean still seemed convinced that this string of oddities was a prelude to something huge and nasty, but increasingly Cas was becoming less certain of that.

 

It might have had something to do with the fact that he was happier, now, in the middle of all this, than he'd ever been, as far back as he could remember. He was happy, puzzling things out with Dean and with Sam. Teasing out his feelings for Dean, Dean's feelings for him. It was a golden state of life. He hoped very much that it wouldn't come crashing down.

 

“I'm gonna fidget out of my mind if we don't get a lead soon,” Dean had said, later that night, after several hours of all three of them flipping through newspapers, the binder, Google pages, and phone books. “Birds and floods, who the hell are we supposed to talk to about that? God, usually there's, you know, _next of kin_. Policemen. Victims. Usually we've got a _point_ to chase, at least.”

 

“It's not a hunt, Dean,” Cas said softly, without looking up.

 

“I _know_ it's not a hunt,” Dean growled, slamming Yann's binder shut and slumping in his chair. “That's the _problem._ ”

 

“Maybe something'll pop up soon and we can chase that,” Sam said, pacifying.

 

“God, I hope so.”

 

They sat in silence for a while, Sam and Cas continuing to peruse their bits of research, until Dean lifted his head as if startled and looked towards the window.

 

“What?” Sam said, without looking up from Google.

 

“D'you hear that?”

 

At that, Sam and Cas looked up, confused. It was silent in the room except for the muttering of the air conditioner and the vague sounds of traffic down the road.

 

“No...?”

 

“Sounds like those birds,” Dean said. “Kingfishers or whatever.” He got up and pulled back the window drapes. Neither of the others could see out the window, and neither was inclined to get up to see a few birds that they'd been seeing all day anyway. “My God, they're loud.”

 

“I don't hear anything,” Cas said, sighing, leaning back into the pillows and pulling up his knees to rest the local phone book on. He was thumbing the edge of the pages. He wasn't precisely sure what he was looking for.

 

Dean glared out the window for a few moments longer. He couldn't see them, but he could hear them, their chattering rattling against the window glass, a harsh echo from outside, as if a whole group of them had congregated outside the motel to obnoxiously serenade them.

 

“They'd better shut up before I try to sleep,” he muttered. Sighing, itching anxiously at the back of his neck, he went across the room and dropped onto the bed next to Cas, picking up another phone book to flip aimlessly through it, hoping some great answer would pop out at him from the miles of tiny text.

 

Humming absently to himself, scrolling his finger down a page in search of pet shops that might sell birds, Cas unfolded his body a little, enough that he could reach across and squeeze Dean's knee in silent reassurance. Dean paused, and his fingertips ghosted lightly across the back of Cas' hand.

 

“So,” Sam said, startling them; they both quickly snatched their hands back to their own persons, neither of them catching the quick glance Sam had already thrown them. “I say we split up tomorrow. I'll go to the library, look through archives, I guess. See if I can talk to someone who might know more about this place than we do.”

 

“Me and Cas?” Dean asked, surreptitiously looking at the angel from under his eyelashes, the crease where his hipbone met his leg, the way his grey T-shirt fell in a soft semi-circle against the base of his throat, collarbone pale and jutting. He swallowed. He wanted to kiss it. He wondered if there'd be time, tomorrow, when Sam was out looking, to kiss it.

 

“Well, you can come with me if you want, or, I don't know—local historians? Maybe there's someone around who knows about kingfishers.”

 

“Everything there _is_ to know about kingfishers is online, isn't it?”

 

Sam sighed. “I mean—knows about them...knows if they're connected to. This.”

 

Dean paused. He didn't want to ask what Sam meant, but he knew he'd have to.

 

“'This'?”

 

“Floods and birds, Dean, like you said. That girl in Dubois—”

 

“I know, Sam, I know.” The subject of that situation was a sharp bite against Dean's tongue. He wanted it out of his head.

 

“Kingfishers hunt fish,” Cas said softly, airing out the uncomfortable silent mutual thought in his usual way. “It stands to reason...after—”

 

“I'm hungry,” Dean announced, snappish, slamming the phone book closed and getting up off the bed. “Are you guys hungry? I'm hungry. Let's go eat.”

 

“Dean,” Sam said, and Dean threw up a hand to silence him.

 

“Shut up. This is not about me. Okay? _Leave it_. I am not a freaking catfish, I'm a human being, and I'm starving.” He pulled on his jacket, despite the warm summer evening air, and stood impatiently by the door.

 

Sam and Cas exchanged glances and slowly moved to follow him.

 

“What are we going to eat?” Cas asked, sliding on his boots and leaning down to lace them up.

 

“Anything but Mexican,” Dean muttered.

 

 

* * *

 

Kingfishers plagued the sky and the power lines all the way to and from dinner, and chattered incessantly all the while. This was how they ended up with Dean at the window for most of the night. From the time he’d laid down it had become a vicious cycle of sleeping and waking to the laughter of kingfishers outside the motel room, their strange sounds shaking through his bones.

 

 

* * *

 

It was a little past five in the morning when Dean stirred again.

 

Cas, unable to sleep himself, opened his eyes in the dark, feeling Dean tense into that now familiar state of alertness. Dean was already shuffling away from him, slowly easing himself out of bed to do God knew what, and Cas set his face and rolled over, catching his arm and pulling him back down.

 

“Stop,” he whispered firmly, and Dean stared down at him through the hazy darkness. He opened his mouth to speak, but Castiel was quicker. He moved closer, levering and holding himself up over Dean, hand on either side of his head.

 

“Stop,” he repeated, quietly. Dean’s mouth fell shut, but his eyes moved over Cas’ face and drifted down to where his shirt hung loosely off of his chest.

 

Dean’s face moved into faint surprise at their proximity and Cas, too sleep-deprived to tolerate whatever excuse Dean could come up with, closed the distance between their mouths in one motion. He missed slightly, landing on the corner of Dean’s lips.

 

A silence followed, not only in the room, but outside – or in Dean’s head – or wherever it was the kingfishers hid their songs. Dean’s hand slid up Cas’ back in the beat of precious quiet and Cas shifted his mouth again, aligning them better, and there was something so practical about it, the little brush of Cas’ chin against his skin, the slight correction, that Dean couldn’t keep the laugh from drifting out of him.

 

Cas caught the laugh in his mouth and held it there, under his tongue, Dean’s lips moving suddenly against his own. The hand on his back raked upwards, T-shirt riding up under his blunt nails, and for a split second Cas could only think of Dean’s laugh and how he had missed it and how different a laugh could be when one felt it. His heart did something strange, and Dean pulled him closer; his elbows hinged, dropping their chests together.

 

“My heart is racing,” Cas said in a hush, as if this startled him, as if this were relevant, and Dean nodded, and pressed up again, smoothing his palm up between Cas’ shoulder blades, up until he reached the short hairs at the base of his neck and his fingers curled there, and up more, tugging slightly. It was stunning, Dean thought—that it felt so natural, to kiss Castiel, to hold him in the dark.

 

Cas’ tongue licked hesitantly into his mouth and he smiled, meeting it, eyes falling shut, Cas’ weight settling over him.

 

He couldn’t hear any birds. Thank God.

 

Cas huffed air against his cheek and Dean pulled back slightly to tilt his head, sliding their mouths back together again, and Cas arched his back, knee knocking over the softness of Dean’s stomach and settling on the other side till the angel was crouched over him, straddling his lap. Dean’s hand broke loose of his hair and slid down the curve of his back again, resting against Cas’ hip. He was vaguely aware of how the other hand was resting against Cas’ thigh, squeezing gently with every touch of their mouths. His thumb clenched into the muscle of Cas’ leg, mouth closing around Cas’ bottom lip before their tongues tangled again.

 

Their arms knocked together inelegantly; Cas was obviously in the middle of trying to decide what to do with his hands, and Dean’s fingers edged under the hem of his shirt. Warm skin. Very warm. He had always imagined Cas to be cooler to the touch, and he wasn’t, and it imbued him with such a strange sense of comfort to know for certain that he nearly stopped kissing the angel on top of him all together. He breathed against Cas’ mouth and Cas kissed him softly, palms dragging down Dean’s shoulders and towards his chest.

 

There was a pause, and Dean opened his eyes, Cas peering down at him, lips rounded with kissing, the edges a hazy pink in the late night. He felt careful fingers push back his hair and frame his face and Cas bent down to kiss him again, thumbing at his cheekbones. The kiss was brief and Dean followed Cas with his eyes as he pulled back again, still stroking his face.

 

The angel cracked a smile first, eyes hooding sleepily. He shifted on Dean’s lap and Dean stroked his thigh and down his bent leg to his calf and the taught skin of his kneecap. Cas’ hand settled on his stomach, pushing down and in slightly, feeling the solid muscle underneath, and he gazed at Dean’s chest, amused. Dean covered the slender fingers with his own, thumb rubbing circles on Cas’ wrist, both of them caught in that cautious, curious tenderness that unfolded around them when they touched like this. Like they'd never touched before, they realized; but it was too late, too soft, too dark to care, to be shocked by that epiphany.

 

“Hey,” Dean whispered, and Cas’ eyes flicked up to meet his again. The hunter’s face mirrored his own, smile soft. It brightened his tired face, the bags under his eyes less noticeable among the folds of his cheeks and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

 

“Hey,” Cas whispered back, gently moving his hand against Dean’s stomach.

 

A minute dragged by, time stretching as a bird stretches its wings, as if it were considering the height and the risk of a fall should something go wrong, should its confidence or control waver and fail. The stucco ceiling spread above their heads. Something in the architecture popped, a wood beam adjusting to the humidity.

 

Cas looked down at Dean and saw that a kind of comfort had settled over his features. Something had eased. Something had lifted. A pleasure swelled in his chest and his heart fluttered again, picked up, sensing the change in Dean’s face, in the very atmosphere of his body.

 

“What?” Dean said softly, and Cas shook his head, bending down to kiss him again. To tuck the tired questions back into his mouth, to give him cause to let his eyes shut, to feel the exhale of when he went lax under Cas’ hands.

 

Finally they both slept, Cas tucked against Dean's chest, their heads resting chin-to-crown, and the kingfishers were quiet.

 

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Dean surprised both his brother and the angel by saying that he wanted to head out to the library with Sam after all. His reasoning, when pressed, was that the damn birds might be quieter inside, and less likely to peck his eyes out than if he were stumbling around town looking for pet shops and courthouse archives. It seemed the respite of the night before, whether brought on by Castiel's late-dark kisses or something else, had ended; Dean had stormed out of the shower that morning mumbling about how he was going to get out his shotgun and blast every last one of those chattering things to Hell if they didn't can it soon.

 

Sam and Cas, of course, heard nothing.

 

By the time breakfast was over, they were all in agreement that it was a good decision. Cas, apparently, was quite taken with the idea of getting a day to wander around a strange place and see the sights for himself.

 

They parted ways on the town square, which was bustling with Saturday-morning crowds, and promised to regroup a little after noon for lunch and to see what they'd gathered. The library was a ways across town, and Cas stood on a square corner watching the Impala vanish down the road for a moment before he put his hands in his pockets, as Dean liked to do, and chose a direction at random to walk.

 

It was a low grey day, humid, but without any chance of rain, he thought—it didn't feel like rain in his bones, at least. The square was a busy place. Colorful pennants were strung between lampposts, and he could see unlit fairy lights in the trees around the courthouse. Everything was a muddled haze of antique shops and bookstores, coffeehouses and restaurants. Cas was beginning to find that he had a fondness for town squares. They always seemed so neat, so organized, little slices of place caught up in their own nostalgia. Flocks of kingfishers circled and dove overhead, perching in trees, surveying him with cocked heads and beady eyes as he walked.

 

There was a Catholic church, pleasantly steepled, down the street, and—having no other idea of where to start searching for where those key words, _birds_ and _flood_ , might intersect—he waited for the crosswalk light to change, and then followed a mother with a stroller across the street, and ascended the steps into the cool narthex of the church.

 

It was dim and quiet inside. Cas paused beside the door and then dipped two fingers in the holy water cistern on the wall, unsure how necessary it was to cross himself. He was an angel, after all. Almost overqualified to be here.

 

He gently wiped the water on his jeans and moved inside the sanctuary, footsteps echoing under the low, wide ceiling and the chipped and crippled pews. Behind the altar a bent, elderly woman was lighting the candles that framed Christ hanging on his crucifix.

 

Cas glanced only briefly at the likeness of the Son of God, and frowned. He would never understand why the American faithful were so keen to make their savior so unnervingly white.

 

Unsure of what to do with himself, Cas slipped into a pew near the front; it creaked under his weight. The woman looked over her shoulder, and smiled when they met eyes before going back to her work.

 

Cas breathed, leaning back in the pew. It was nice to be here, if only for a little while. The air in the church was cool, pale and thin, comforting; it smelled faintly of incense and wine and the wood of the pews, candle smoke and flowers. It had been so long since he'd been in a holy place.

 

“Can I help you?” the old woman said, her voice echoing, as she finished lighting the candles and waved the match out, coming around the raised altar and bending down to rearrange the flower displays on the steps. They were Virgin Mary blue, all of them, sprays of yellow in the center. Cas ran them through the dictionary of his mind. _Columbine._ “Father Jacobson is at a conference in Ohio this week, I'm afraid, if you're here for Reconciliation.”

 

“Oh—no,” Cas said, startled to be spoken to. “No, I'm not here for Reconciliation.” _Besides_ , he thought, _no sin I had to confess would be heard by anyone anyway._

 

“Just stopping in, then,” she said, nodding her white head.

 

“Actually—I wondered,” he said, surprised by his own boldness, “if you could tell me anything about the town.”

 

She smiled, fingers gently brushing against the soft blue petals in the display. “Passing through, then?” She left the flowers and shuffled, careful of her hips, into the pew beside him. “What can I do for you?”

 

Cas shifted, awkwardly, unsure of what to do with his hands. He settled for folding them between his legs. “I'm curious about the birds. And the flood. It was meant to have flooded here, wasn't it? But it never did.”

 

“Mmm.” She nodded; a tiny gold name-tag on her dress pocket proclaimed her name to be Julia Everhardt in scratched, tiny letters. “It's been a strange year.”

 

“Strange how?”

 

“Oh, you know,” she said, gesturing liquidly with her small, feeble hands. “The river has been very quiet. Very odd. I've lived here all my life and it's flooded every year—seventy-three years, would you believe? Every April, every May, like clockwork. Easter is always wet. But not this year.” She shook her head, gazing off as if lost in recollection. “And then the kingfishers—let me tell you, there are all sorts of reporters asking around about those things! They make such an awful racket.”

 

“The birds are unusual.”

 

“It's all unusual. All very unusual.”

 

“Miss—Everhardt,” Cas said, carefully, catching another glimpse at her name-tag; she turned her squint-eyed face to him and smiled again. “Could you tell me if there's any—connection? Between the kingfishers and the flood?”

 

She blinked. Her eyes were very brown, like river mud, and a change came over her expression, although Cas was damned if he could place what it meant. She paused, lifted bony fingers to her lips and seemed lost in thought for a moment, and then she turned back to him and placed a gentle hand on his knee.

 

“Oh, honey, I'm not the woman to ask about those kinds of things,” she said, lips turned up as if keeping a secret behind them. “You might go back down to the square, you see, and take a left on Hanson, and right on that corner you'll want to talk to Sugar Byrne. A specialty shop, that's what she's got. Knows all about birds. Good girl, Sugar Byrne.”

 

“She can tell me about the river?” Cas asked, as Julia Everhardt got creakily to her feet and began to shuffle back out of the pew. “And the birds?”

 

“Oh, of course, dear!” the old woman said, her back turned to him, now, adjusting her collar. “She's a Riverlander, after all.”

 

She vanished into the tabernacle, and Cas heard the sounds of matches being struck again, and a light flared up inside the tiny room.

 

He paused a moment longer in the still, calm air of the church, and then got up. He wasn't sure of whether or not to genuflect, unsure whether anyone would notice if he did or didn't; he settled for inclining his head awkwardly in the direction of Christ on the crucifix, and then left the church.

 

Down the street, a left on Hanson—there it was, plain as day, a brick-faced building with wide tall windows and a menagerie of birdcages behind them. A hanging wooden sign above the door proclaimed it to be Byrne's Birdhouse.

 

He opened the door to a tiny foyer, enclosed, and one more door separating him from the main shop. A bell hung over it, and above the door in careful hand painted letters was the phrase: _Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise._

 

* * *

 

Galilee's one and only public library was small, rundown, and had disappointing archives, and an even more disappointing Local History section. The small pile of books between Sam and Dean on the cramped corner desk was all there was to show for it, and half of them had been discarded already.

 

“Be so much easier if that Porter guy had just made more copies of his damn book,” Dean mumbled, tossing down a thin brown volume that was mostly town council minute meetings and not much else.

 

“It's never that easy,” Sam said.

 

“Tell me about it.”

 

In near-unison they stopped working to rub their eyes and stretch. The dull fluorescent lights over the desks were buzzing and flickering, but at least Dean couldn't hear the damn kingfishers in here.

 

“I get the sinking feeling we're not gonna find anything here,” Dean said, clearing his throat and dropping his hands onto the table in a gesture of finality. Sam sighed. He couldn't disagree.

 

“D'you have any ideas?” Sam pushed aside the remaining books, which were looking increasingly like a stack of disappointments rather than a stack of possibilities. “Or should we just head back to the square and find Cas?”

 

“I vote Cas. And lunch,” Dean said, awkwardly unfolding himself from his seat. He stretched—something in his back popped—and then he looked at Sam, who was looking at him as if he wanted to say something.

 

“What?”

 

Sam blinked, and closed his mouth. “—Never mind.”

 

“Sam, what?”

 

“I was just—never mind. I was going to ask something but it's none of my business.”

 

“Sam,” Dean said, in the tone of voice that meant _just spit it out. Don't be coy, it's annoying._

 

Sam sighed, getting out of his own chair, scooping the books up into the crook of his elbow to leave on the re-shelving cart. “I was just—going to ask about you and, you know. You and Cas.”

 

Dean watched his back as he dumped the books onto the cart. “What about us?”

 

“You know.” Sam didn't complete the thought until they were leaving, walking across the parking lot to the car. “What's up with you guys?”

 

Something shifted uneasily in Dean's stomach, and he wasn't sure why. They both knew perfectly well what Sam was getting at, but neither of them wanted to say it out loud. They both knew, as well, that Sam would be nothing but supportive either way. The uneasiness seemed a bit ridiculous, but it existed all the same.

 

They swung into the car, and Dean started the engine. He could feel Sam watching him out of the corner of his eye as they pulled into the street, and finally he said, “I don't know what's up with Cas and me.”

 

“I just thought—I was kind of under the impression you guys were, you know—”

 

“For God's sake, spit it out, Sam, I'm not twelve.”

 

“Together.”

 

Rumbling silence. Somewhere back a ways Dean heard the kingfishers start up again.

 

“I guess that's one word for it,” he said finally, more softly than he'd intended.

 

Sam didn't say anything. When Dean glanced over at him, he saw what looked like a smirk on his brother's mouth, and scowled.

 

“What's so funny?”

 

“Nothing! Nothing.” Sam looked out the window, but the smirk was still there, and he bit at one of his fingernails as if to stifle laughter.

 

Dean thought he heard Sam chuckle “I knew it” under his breath, but the kingfishers were so goddamn loud that it was impossible to tell.

 

 

* * *

 

It was hard to see if anyone was inside the shop when Cas first entered. Bird cages crowded most of the floor space and what little was available for moving around was dedicated to crooked shelving units that seemed to nod sleepily in the afternoon sun. There were bags of seed and novelties: china plates with painted robins, a wall clock that made bird calls on the hour. Bird houses galore of every shape and size: churches, town houses, the simple and the elaborate, most done up in poppy reds and sunny oranges and summer-sky blues. He walked past them, the ancient floor boards moaning under his feet. There was a strong smell of potpourri in the air to cover up the faint scent of ammonia from the cages, and he crinkled his nose, stepping through the motes of dust in front of the half-drawn window shades.

 

“Hello?” he said and there was a rummage from somewhere. “Ms. Byrne?”

 

A macaw squawked loudly in the enclosure to his right and Cas drew near, peering between the bars. The beady bird-eye stared back, winking in the light, head twitching from side to side, emerald green and royal blue feathers ruffling when it puffed its wings up.

 

“ _Stars!_ ” the parrot whistled at him. “ _Cross! Cross lucky!”_ It bobbed its neck and sang again, a low, lilting song, obviously a human melody. The canaries across the room and the finches joined in, and suddenly, the whole room was brimming with noise – some kind of strange music. Cas stepped back from the parrot, glancing around nervously.

 

“ _Stars!”_ chirped the myna bird and the cockatoo with his yellow crest. _“Stars for love! Lucky stars!”_

 

The rabble grew and Cas stood in the center of it, not sure where to let his eyes land. It wasn’t threatening, and it wasn’t as discordant as the kingfishers, but it was isolating. He stood there, gaze moving from the cockatiels on their swings to the pigeons roosting in their wooden hutch, picking out words among the tweets and peeping. _Stars. Lucky stars._

 

The sound of a door hinge cut through the symphony of birdsong and five cuckoo clocks went off at once, spitting out their little charming rings and clanks. A shadow fell out of the door and a woman stepped out, beating feathers off of her apron as she came into the room. She was singing loudly, undeterred by the cacophony around her. Her curves swelled past the hems of her apron, a plump, soft, womanly shape clothed in a loud floral print dress underneath it.

 

“Excuse me!” Cas called over the noise, and she lifted her head, grey eyes twinkling.

 

“Oh _law_!” she exclaimed, looking at him, putting a hand over her heart, startled. “Sakes alive, I didn’t hear you come in at all, sweetheart! Have you been standing there long? I have to tell Nate to put that wind chime back up so I can hear when people pass through!”

 

Her voice was high-pitched and her words were clipped twitters and all at once Cas saw her as a bird herself. A fat brown sparrow of a woman, bustling over to a hook where she hung her white apron and then over to him to assist. Her face was bright with excitement as she came to a stop before him, hands folded expectantly.

 

“How can I help you?” She smiled, all pearly teeth.

 

“Are you Ms. Byrne?” Cas said, and she nodded, a tight ringlet of brown hair coming unpinned.

 

“ _Mrs._!” she said, by way of correction, flashing him a view of her wedding band, and Cas smiled gently back. “But you can just call me Sugar, that’s what everyone calls me anyway.”

 

She paused as the din of the birds died down a little, and studied him for a moment, her eyes narrowing slightly.

 

“Have we met before?” she asked, and Cas shook his head.

 

“No, I’m—actually visiting in town, and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions?”

 

She straightened up, obviously flattered by his words, and nodded, smoothing the front of her dress down.

 

“Well! Of course! Ask me anything you’d like and I’ll do my best!” She grinned.

 

“I was just wondering why there are so many kingfishers here this season? I’m a bit of a casual bird watcher.” The lie rolled smoothly off his tongue in a way that surprised him. He wasn't used to that. “And when I heard about them I came right away to see for myself. It’s rather incredible.”

 

Her eyes widened and she nodded violently. “Oh yes, it’s almost mad, isn’t it? They are getting in the way all over the place!”

 

“So this hasn’t happened before?”  
  


“Oh, no, never,” she hastened to explain. “It happened overnight too! One day we had as many as we should have, and then we woke up and they were just all over the place. They’ve hung around, too. Nate—that’s my husband—he thinks it’s because the water stayed so low this year, but I couldn’t tell you for certain. They just all landed here and nobody can figure out how to get them out of here.”

 

“So there’s nothing about this town that would have brought them here...specifically?”

 

“Well,” Sugar began, “I wouldn’t know a real answer for that. I suppose it could have happened anywhere, but like Nate said, when the floods didn’t come this season—” She cut herself off.

 

“That was odd, wasn’t it?” Cas probed, and she hesitated.

 

“Oh, yes. Very odd.”

 

“Odd enough to draw thousands of kingfishers, though?”

 

She pressed her lips together and scratched at her hand nervously, and Cas’ eyes tracked the movement, catching sight of something peculiar. A star etched on her palm. He couldn’t tell if it was a tattoo or not, but she felt his gaze and pressed her palm to her leg.

 

“I don’t know much about Riverlanders,” he admitted, knowing his gaze had been caught, looking up at her eyes. She froze for a moment and then relaxed, recognizing the innocent curiosity in his expression.

 

“Ah, well,” she laughed, and shyly offered him her hand, fingers extended to show off the full extent of her palm. “You can always tell one by their hand!”

 

“Why do you do this?” he asked, examining her palm but not touching it.

 

She wiggled her fingers.

 

“You ask hard questions!” She giggled again. She had a bustling way of talking, like a train barreling forward without any intention of stopping. “For a lot of reasons, I s’pose. Love and luck, and all of that...”

 

Cas licked his lips, considering what to ask next.

 

“I was told to get a Riverlander’s opinion on the birds,” he said, voice halting, and Sugar retracted her hand, letting it fall among her skirts. Her eyebrows raised and she blinked at him.

 

“You were now? But it makes sense. If you can’t make heads or tails of it you go to religion, right?”

 

She laughed lightly, all traces of her earlier embarrassment gone. Her easy demeanor made the whole shop seem cozier, the very walls standing up a little more in her presence.

 

“What a strange little religion it is,” she said quietly, mostly to herself, looking around her shop and smiling. “You know, even before Amos Porter preached here they had stories. Old stories. _Muddy_ stories. Stories you didn’t hear unless you went way into the backwoods. The swamps. It’s so hard to tell who started what now that history is history.”

 

She took a breath, and rubbed her thumb along her palm, lost in what she was saying. She wandered sideways a little, looking into the racket of her birdcages. Cas followed her with his eyes.

 

“My Nanny, she used to say they came up with the slaves, that those stories were older than us. Older than our country. They came from some old place, some old river had spun them up. The Nile, or the Euphrates, those Bible rivers? Wherever it came from first doesn’t matter I guess – nobody took notice till Amos Porter came.

 

“None of that matters, and I’m getting all carried away like usual!” she said with a laugh, shooting Cas a smile. “It’s the stories that matter, right? Well, like I said. Before Amos Porter, they had traditions, and round these parts if you see a kingfisher that means someone’s fixed to get married.”

 

“Engaged?” Cas said, deadpanning, thinking immediately of Dean’s violent reaction the birds.

 

“Exactly!” she said brightly, clapping her hands, suddenly excited. “Kids round here go crazy if they see one. Small town, you know, very small town. Traditions stick. Kingfishers in the summer are the best. They mean a lasting one. But if you see one, that means someone’s liable to ask you, or you should ask soon, or however you take it. People talk about a kingfisher and they’re probably talking about a wedding too.”

 

“Must be a big wedding coming up,” Cas said, an attempt to joke, but Sugar stilled and her shoulders relaxed.

 

“It’s just that, isn’t it? A big wedding. The biggest wedding anyone will ever see.” She looked earnestly at Castiel, eyes dreamy. “Why else would there be so many? And no flood?”

 

She trailed off, leaving Cas in the lingering fog of what she was saying.

 

“I don’t follow,” Cas whispered, and she looked back at him, tilting her head, not giving him a real answer.

 

“It’s such a shame that people don’t know. Even if you don’t believe it, it’s such good story. Talks about patience, about love, all those kindly things. All those lovely things, and that lovely, lovely, star shining light on everything. I don’t see why it has to be such a hush. Why wouldn’t you want to hear about a marriage? About fish turning into men? Stars becoming birds and becoming men too. It’s such a nice story.”

 

She spoke as if she were speaking to herself, eyes only landing on him as she paused. His face must have betrayed him at the mention of fish.

 

She stared at him.

 

“Is there something bothering you?” she asked, and he leaned away, taken aback.

 

“...my friends and I,” he answered, the words easing out of him, prompted by her sweetness, by her warmth to be honest, in some faint attempt to make sense of what he was hearing. It was the least he could do. There was something about the way she spoke of the things she told him. There was something so intimate about it that he didn’t dare ask her to explain further, and he had the sincere feeling she wouldn’t be able to. She’d look at him, the way Lily had looked at them in Greenacre, and insist it wasn’t her story to tell, he knew. “We’ve been encountering some strange things and we heard about the birds here and thought maybe someone could explain it all...”

 

“Where are you staying? You said you’re just visiting, right? Oh, tell me you aren’t staying off the highway, it’s all seedy there!” she said abruptly, and before Cas could respond she was talking again, fluttering her hands around wildly and careening around the room in a pointless sort of bustle.

 

“Oh, no, you know what? Come stay with Nate and I! We’ve got two rooms upstairs and I haven’t cooked for company in too long! The birds are polite at night, too, don’t worry about that, and Nate can tell you more about everything, with the kingfishers and the flood and all. He’s so much better at explaining than I am!”

 

“I – we really couldn’t…” Cas began, and she shook her head, grinning.

 

“Didn’t you read the sign, sweetheart? No strangers in Galilee!”

 

 

* * *

 

 

They spotted Cas hovering anxiously on a street corner on the square, watching for them, and he dawdled there a moment longer while Dean found a place to park. The angel had his hands in his pockets and kept glancing up at the sign over Byrne's Birdhouse.

 

“Hey!” Dean said as they rounded the building, pocketing his keys. “There you are.”

 

“Did you find anything at the library?” Cas asked, looking fidgety.

 

“Nah, not really. What about you?”

 

“Well,” Cas said, looking at the ricocheting calamity behind the windows of Sugar Byrne's shop, “I found a Riverlander, and a place for us to sleep tonight. If that counts for anything.”

 

* * *

 

Sam and Dean's first interaction with Sugar Byrne lasted approximately three minutes. They went inside, she bustled out to meet them, shook their hands—Sam caught sight of the star in her palm and fixed his eyes on it for the rest of the conversation—told them her address, which Dean jotted down in his phone after a moment of confusion, and then shooed them off, chirping about having to close up shop for the afternoon soon. They were hustled out of the store and found themselves right back on the sidewalk, Dean and Sam in something of a daze, Cas chewing on the inside of his lip.

 

“She was rather forward about it,” he said, by way of apology. “I kept telling her we had a place to stay, but she insisted.”

 

“I honestly can't tell if this is a bad idea or not,” Dean said, peering at the address in the text draft on his phone. “We're total strangers.”

 

“Maybe not,” Cas said, and the brothers looked at him. He clamped his mouth shut as if he'd said too much and promptly began to study a light-post across the street.

 

“What's that supposed to mean?”

 

Cas sighed. “She—looked like she recognized me. That's all. And after that she was—very _keen_ to invite us. She seems harmless. I don't see why we shouldn't.”

 

“Did she tell you anything?” Sam asked, as by some mutual unspoken agreement they all began walking down the street towards the nearest place still serving lunch. “About the birds?”

 

Cas fell into step beside him, Dean a little ways ahead. He swallowed. “Apparently it's tradition in this town that kingfishers are omens. Good ones,” he added hastily—Dean had turned his head as if intrigued by the word; now he sighed and rolled his eyes, disappointed. “They're a sign that there's a wedding coming.”

 

“There are billions of those damn things,” Dean said. “Pretty freakin' huge wedding.”

 

“That's what she said, yes.”

 

“Any idea what that has to do with—whatever? You said she was a Riverlander, does it have anything to do with this miracle shit?”

 

They ducked into a dimly-lit roadhouse sort of burger joint, walls dripping with vague Americana paraphernalia, and found a corner table with a loudly checkered tablecloth. Cas seemed to be doing his best to avoid Dean's gaze.

 

He wasn't sure how much he wanted to say, and how much he wanted to leave to the Byrnes if and when they ended up taking them up on their offer of hospitality. The more he dwelt on what Sugar had told him the more it confirmed what they'd been thinking since Dubois—this had something to do with Dean, or perhaps with all of them. Kingfishers hunted fish, kingfishers in the wake of the flood, the lack thereof. Heavy hearts, catfish, Dean. It was all becoming a bit too much of a Mobius strip for comfort.

 

“She said her husband could explain better than she could,” he said, settling on ambiguity. “It's the best lead we've got. And what's the harm in accepting her offer? It'll save us money, anyway, if nothing else.”

 

Sam glanced at Dean, who rolled his eyes and sagged in his chair. “Fine,” he said. “But if there's even a whiff of weirdness in that house, we're booking it, understand?”

 

“Of course.”

 

They ate in stiff silence, and all the while Cas was acutely aware of Sam looking at him, and at Dean, as if contemplating something, but he was in too much of a bewildered haze to remark upon it.

 

 

* * *

 

Dean, increasingly, was coming to hate this entire chain of events. His tolerance level for strangeness was incredibly high, and even this was pushing his boundaries.

 

They drove the half-hour out to the Byrne house and Dean tallied things in his head, his mouth coming down at the corners further the longer he thought. Werewolves asking hunters for help and withstanding silver, suspiciously pleasant seasons as far as the natural world was concerned, fad hundred-year-old religions rearing their heads for what seemed no particular reason—not a significant peep from the paranormal world in _ages._ The kobold in St Cloud had been their first real hunt in months. Everything else had been petty, open-and-shut in two or three days, and now Dean got the feeling that the entire unearthly world, everything he'd grown accustomed to tracking down and killing, was shrinking back, pulling in on itself as if preparing to weather a storm. He couldn't shake the thought of the demonologist in Nebraska. Hell—if demons came falling at his feet pleading to be exorcised, he'd be more than a little freaked out. Things just didn't happen that way.

 

Riverlanders, then, too—stars and catfish, and crazy kids in podunk towns clinging to his leg and calling him that. Catfish. And now he was, apparently, driving straight through a Hitchcock movie, and his dumb little brother and oblivious angel couldn't even hear the birds that were screeching along after them.

 

He didn't like it one bit. It was too nebulous, too gentle. It had the uncomfortable air of a fairy tale to it, which made his gut twist just on principle. He and Sam had been living in God's bedtime stories their entire lives. He'd thought it was done with.

 

Really, he thought, the only good thing to come out of all this so far—that is, the only thing to make him feel remotely better about the circumstances—was the situation with Cas. The touch of him. Kissing him. The night before, that sudden little surge of affection between them, that had been alright. That had been more than alright. It had been good. It had been _right_ , he thought.

 

And now Sam knew, and to Dean's surprise not a single thing had shifted. Sure, they were drowning in crazy, as usual, but that one thing between them all hadn't changed. Still brothers, still friends, and with one less secret weighing down the air in the Impala.

 

The Byrne place was a farmhouse, nestled in its own little copse of trees, small and cool-colored and inviting. Two trucks in the drive, one more weathered than the other, a screened-in porch. Not too far off in the distance Dean could see the Mississippi, a glittering silver snake under the sun of late afternoon. He wondered if the house was ever in any danger, when it flooded. He wondered vaguely if it would ever flood again in Galilee.

 

To his relief the chatter of the kingfishers fell away almost as soon as they pulled into the drive.

 

“This is still totally weird,” Dean said. “I mean, rule one of everything, you don't stay the night with strangers.”

 

“Dean, that woman is shorter than _Cas_. I think we can take her.” Sam popped the passenger door and unfolded himself on the gravel outside.

 

“Yeah, unless she's some kind of—I don't know—bird demon thing,” Dean said, flailing aimlessly for an excuse. “Or some other monster.”

 

“She's human,” Cas said. “Believe me. There was nothing behind her face.”

 

“Okay, but what about her husband, huh?”

 

Neither Sam nor Cas indulged him. After all this time, they were well-adjusted to feeling out the danger of a place by the instinct in their bones, and there was nothing even remotely threatening about this house. Dean's paranoia was beginning to grate a little on both of them.

 

Cas, especially, was entirely intrigued by the prospect of being a guest in someone else's home. He'd never slept, he realized, in a bed that _belonged_ to anyone. It was always shitty motel springs, thin and useless comforters, or roll-away beds with stiff pillows, loveseats under hotel windows next to the rattling air conditioners. He'd never stayed the night in a place that was _owned,_ that was loved.

 

Before they could even reach the porch door, the inner one was opening and Sugar Byrne was stepping out, making her way down the steps to meet them with open and welcoming arms. Dean, a little taken aback by her bluntness, took a step back; she put her hands on her wide hips and smiled at them.

 

“Well now,” she said. “It's been so long since we've had guests! I don't think we had a proper introduction, did we?”

 

Sam made a noise that sounded like “er” and Cas shook his head, pulling up a smile to his face.

 

“I'm Sugar Byrne, call me Sugar. My husband's inside, he's Nate, he's very much looking forward to meeting you all. My stars, you all look so tired. I don't think I ever got your names?”

 

Dean, looking increasingly like he intended to run all the way back to the seedy motel on 4th, lingered behind his brother and Cas, looking from tiny Sugar Byrne to the house and back. It wasn't that he didn't _want_ to spend the night somewhere with real beds—but anything, anything at all that sought them out, claimed to recognize them, was automatically a red flag in his mind, and he couldn't bring himself to put the flag down. Good intentions or not.

 

“I'm—Castiel,” Cas said, awkwardly. “This is Sam, and his brother Dean.”

 

Sugar nodded briskly. Her eyes lingered for a moment on the proximity of Dean's body behind Cas, and then gestured for them to follow her inside.

 

“Now—I'm afraid,” she said, as they trailed nervously after her, “that all I've got are twin beds upstairs, so two of you might have to share. But I don't think that'll be a problem.” She waved her hands aimlessly as if brushing aside the thought; Dean and Cas exchanged glances. “And seeing as Nate and I will be out tonight, you all are coming to the dance with us.”

 

“...dance?” Sam repeated.

 

“Absolutely! Galilee's been hosting a dance every Thursday night for as long as anybody can remember.” Sugar held open the front door for them, waving them inside, one after another. “Nate and I play every week, house is empty for a good four hours, so you've got to come along.”

 

The house, inside, was every bit as charming as it was from the outside. Kerosene lamps stood on nearly every side table and end-board, and a profusion of lace was everywhere, over the back of the couch in the room to their right, edging the tablecloths beneath the lamps. Stairs rose to the left—a kitchen through the back, an open sitting room, a dim and quiet study, an old writing desk covered in loose grey paper and cracked-spine books. The whole place smelled pleasantly like stale perfume and wet wood, and through the screen door down the hall they could see a worn dirt path leading into the tall grass, past the trees, straight, it seemed, to the glittering suggestion of the Mississippi. The floor felt thin beneath their feet. The house was raised, uneasily, on stilts, Dean had seen as they'd come in—to protect it from the floods, he supposed.

 

“Come along upstairs,” Sugar said with cheerful haste, lifting her skirt to climb the steps. She called, “Nate!” down after her as the boys followed, and somewhere in the house a door opened and closed.

 

The second floor was very small, topping the house like a hat. Three rooms in all, and a tiny corridor—the two guest bedrooms, Dean assumed, and a bathroom across the hall.

 

“Pick any one you like,” Sugar said. “And go on and get settled. There's food at the dance so we'll eat there. How long were you boys plannin' on staying in town?”

 

There was an uneasy, muttered chorus of “we're not exactly sure” strung between the three of them, and she grinned, shaking her head.

 

“Oh, you traveling types. It doesn't matter a bit. You'll stay here until you're done, then. Strangers are always welcome in Galilee.”

 

She babbled something about letting them get settled in and then went back down the stairs. Conversation rose up after her, a low man's voice mingling with her sweet high chirping, and the three hunters looked at one another.

 

“This is still really weird,” Dean muttered.

 

“It's kind of them,” Cas said, choosing a door at random and walking through it. “She insisted. It'd be rude to leave now.”

 

“Weird,” Dean said again, a mumble, and he looked at Sam, who shrugged.

 

“When was the last time anyone was this nice to us?” Sam said softly, eyeing the vanishing of the stairs down to the landing. “Shouldn't we just enjoy it?”

 

Dean sighed. He couldn't come up with a suitable excuse anymore.

 

He followed Cas into the bedroom. It was unspoken that they'd share, he supposed. It was a fact that had settled gently into their lives, these past few weeks, like every other part of everything: Dean took the far bed, Sam rode shotgun almost always, and Cas slept with Dean. A nice addition, all things considered, he thought.

 

“Well, this is—cute,” Dean said, unsure of exactly what to call it. The room was miniscule, hardly even a child's room. A twin bed, as promised, under the window on the outside wall, and an unlit lantern on the sill. A rocking chair in the opposite corner, a white-painted bureau, what looked like wedding photos of Nate—a tall, leaning, dark-haired man—and Sugar on the walls above it. A mirror, a closet with nothing in it. Everything about it was soft, almost grandmotherly. Comfortable.

 

Cas was standing in the middle of the floor, taking it all in, and when he turned to face Dean he was smiling, gently.

 

“We can have a good night's sleep here,” he said. “You can't hear the birds, can you?”

 

Dean paused, and then shook his head. No. He couldn't. It was pleasantly quiet in here, the pale light through the curtainless window painting white streaks across the bedspread, gently smoothing the lines of Castiel's face.

 

He looked like he belonged here, in a room like this, Dean thought. All chiaroscuro and sweet light.

 

“You've been very tense,” Cas said, pulling Dean out of his reverie.

 

Dean scoffed. “Well, yeah.” He leaned against the bureau, toying with one of the loose white knobs. “This is nice, I guess, but it's still weird. We're not getting any further from weird. Or any closer to—whatever, you know. _Answers_.”

 

“Nothing's chasing us,” Cas said, slowly, padding across the floor in his boots to stand toe-to-toe with Dean. Dean's gaze fell to the near-brush of their hips. Cas touched his face with one hand, cradling his cheek just softly. “Not here, at least. Can you try to at least breathe a bit tonight? We all should, I think.”

 

“I just can't shake it, Cas,” Dean said, in a hush, finally meeting his eyes. “That kid in Dubois.”

 

“Try to?”

 

“I am trying.” Dean sighed, pulling his face away from Cas' touch. “It'd be so much easier if I could sink my teeth into something, y'know? Stab something, shoot something, take something down.”

 

“Maybe there's nothing to stab this time,” Cas said. “Or shoot or kill. Maybe this is something different, something good.”

 

“It's never different. It's never good, you know that.”

 

“Well,” Cas said, “we've surprised ourselves before.”

 

They looked at each other, then, in the quiet and the absence of kingfisher chatter, and Dean tilted his face up, as if to kiss him, before Sugar's voice from downstairs called up to them, some twitter about the dance.

 

Cas smiled, let his hand rest against Dean's throat for a moment, and then they slipped out of the guest room to follow Sam down the stairs into the early evening.

 

 

* * *

 

The Galilee dance hall was nothing more than a repurposed gymnasium in the back of the First Baptist church. They’d ripped up the basketball court and put down hardwood dance floor and done up the walls and kept the industrial sized kitchen off to one side. Before that, Sugar told them, it had been in a barn, but like most other things that were lost in Galilee it had been lost to a flood some years back.

 

“You boys make sure you get your photo taken for the wall!” Nate reminded them, his strong tanned arm around Sugar’s shoulders.

 

“Photos?” Dean blanched.

 

“Yes sir! Your first time at the dance hall we take your picture and put it up on the wall. That way you never have to come back a stranger,” Nate said, laughing, pointing a little around Sam to the far end of the hall.

 

Cas and Dean followed his hand and Sam turned, looking at the high back wall, the top curved with the top of the gym. Every square inch was covered in photographs and a man with a camera was set up next to a dark blue sheet, sitting on a stool with a Polaroid camera balanced on his knees, tapping his foot to the music faintly playing over the speakers.

 

“Marcus will take your picture,” Sugar explained. “You just go over there and ask and he’ll do it for you quick as can be.”

 

She looked purposefully at Dean and Cas, eyes wide and excited. “Now, don’t go dancing till you’ve gotten your picture, alright? It’s mighty bad luck!”

 

Dean’s face remained unconvinced—in fact he looked a bit frightened at the prospect of a photograph—but Cas nodded in understanding.

 

“Sugar!” Someone called her name and she excused herself, trotting to the stage that was being assembled a few feet away. Nate glanced fondly at the three hunters in her absence, his kind eyes shifting over each of them in turn.

 

If Sugar was a sparrow, her husband was leggy as stork. He stood with one hand held in the pocket of his loose slacks, his fingers curled around the handle of a beaten violin case. He was a slight man with hair that was going silver at the temples prematurely; he looked distinguished. On his large palm was a star, same as his wife’s, and his fingers were long enough that they appeared to extend the rays of the star themselves when he chose to open his hand.

 

“Thank you for staying with us,” he said, his voice even and slow and deeper than one would have anticipated coming someone so willowy. “You’ve made my Sugar so happy,” he continued. His sweet hound-dog eyes lit on Cas. “She loves having guests in the house and waitin’ on em’ and all that.”

 

His words twanged pleasantly in their ears and, for a moment, Dean almost truly trusted him. He was an easy-going man; what he lacked in words he made up in expression; his eyes told everything he felt very plainly.

 

“We’re extremely grateful for your generosity,” Cas answered for the three of them; Dean glanced at him. “A home is such a private place.”

 

He said this last phrase with total sincerity, and an instant of understanding passed between Nate and Cas that neither Sam nor Dean were able to engage in. It was something intangible that Cas had conveyed. Something defined by more than just his words—a feeling that Nate appeared to recognize.

 

He nodded once, sagely, and then hefted the violin case a little, sighing in contentment.

 

“Well, she’ll be singing after me soon,” he chuckled. “I’ll leave you three to it. There’s food and fixings over there. And go see Marcus, of course.” He inclined his head towards the women and the spaghetti and shrugged his arm again, fingers adjusting on the handle of his instrument.

 

“Thanks,” Sam said, offering a smile.

 

More people were beginning to come in and the last cables for the stage were being unwound and they stood, as always, an island among them.

 

They migrated to the food first, under Dean’s unspoken insistence, and sat quietly, eating, each staring around respectively. Sam broke off a bit of the breadstick the church hospitality had given him and mopped up the sauce with it, staring at the couples and families that were streaming in the front doors. They wore boots and dancing shoes, and many, like Sugar and Nate, were dolled up for the occasion. Girls wandered by, catching his eyes and then looking at each other, giggling into their hands.

 

Sam chewed, moving his gaze elsewhere. The stage was done being set up and Sugar and Nate had taken their places, Sugar sitting primly on a stool and Nate beside her, sliding rosin over his bow, chatting with one of the backing instrumentalists that had come up to join them. A dark-bearded banjo player, a guitarist, and an elderly gentleman shuffling to one part of the stage with a standing bass made up the rest of their band, and Sugar greeted each of them with as much as enthusiasm as she had the three strangers who would be occupying her guest rooms at the end of the night.

 

The main square of dance floor was beginning to be outlined by waiting people, many of them leaning into one another as couples did.

 

Sam felt the heavy weight of his phone in his pocket, but somehow couldn’t keep himself from watching.

 

At six thirty the lights dimmed considerably and a cheer went up, and there was a pop of acoustics as Sugar stepped off of her stool and up to her microphone.

 

“Well hey there!” she called cheerfully to the crowd. “Sure is dark!” She laughed, staring around theatrically. “I’m about blind as a fish in the mud! How about we light a few lamps up here, Andrew!”

 

There was whoop and a holler and then Sam was looking up at them—dozens of lanterns that had suddenly been lit aglow. They were old antique things, ages old and tarnished, but they’d all been wired up, it seemed, hanging down from the low rafters.

 

Applause sounded and Sugar announced the name of their first song and the band struck up, and the people swelled onto the dance floor, settling right into the waltzing tempo.

 

Sam sat back in his chair, a deep breath filtering out of him. He watched the girls and their partners, the way they smiled up at them, the way they turned and stepped, easy and practiced. A few girls danced with each other in the simple way of friends.

 

Dean stole a look at his younger brother, at his melancholy expression.

 

“You okay?” he asked gruffly, and Sam broke his reverie to turn to Dean, smiling absently.

 

“Yeah, I’m fine. You?”

 

Dean shrugged, folding his arms over his chest, eyes retraining on the dancers. Cas tapped his index finger on the handle of the plastic fork beside him, not saying much. Sam turned his head back to the dance floor, the brief exchange halting and hanging unfinished in the air. Sam ran his tongue over the bottom of edge of his teeth and thought.

 

“I’ll be right back,” he said, standing and stacking their empty plates to throw away. He tossed them without another word to Dean and excused himself around people, shouldering through the heavy metal gym doors and into the balmy night air.

 

“I think he wants to make a phone call,” Cas said, back at the table, without taking his eyes off the dancers. Dean looked away from where his brother’s back had just disappeared out of the building. That didn’t bode well.

 

“If he’s smart, he won’t,” Dean replied, and Cas scowled at him.

 

“That’s hardly fair to Sam.”

 

“It’s hardly fair to anyone, but that’s the way it is. He knows it’s better to leave her there. Nobody gets their hopes up.”

 

Cas made an indignant noise and frowned, turning back to the dancing.

 

“I wonder who said it had to be like that,” he mused out loud. “I wonder who decided those were the rules.”

 

“I don’t know, but they are,” Dean said curtly, and they dropped into silence again, Sugar’s sweet voice filling up the space between them. Dean stretched his legs under the table and then refolded them under his chair, trying to ignore the stony face Cas was still sporting.

 

“Come on,” Dean said, interrupting Cas’ listening. Cas turned his head to him, but found Dean had stood and was holding out his hand. He waved it a little and Cas’ eyebrows crawled together.

 

“Well?” Dean said, and Cas scooted his chair back, staring up to his face.

 

“Well?” the angel prompted, and his mouth fought a small smile, teasing Dean a little for his trouble.

 

“We have to get our pictures taken, right?” Dean rushed. “Before we can dance? Or it’s bad luck or whatever that bullshit was. I mean, it's fucking weird, seeing as we'll never be back here again, but I like this song, and I kinda want to dance with you.”

 

He cleared his throat, eyes slipping sideways.

 

“And the last thing we need is bad luck,” he finished, hasty.

 

“I didn’t know you could dance,” Cas said evenly, and Dean rolled his eyes.

 

“Like I’ve seen you get down,” he grumbled, finally reaching out to pull Cas up himself.

 

Cas accepted the Dean Winchester brand of apology for what it was and allowed himself to be led around the perimeter of the gym.

 

He stood beside Dean against the photography backdrop, Dean’s arm slung around his waist, his own crawling up Dean’s back, resting between his shoulders.

 

“Smile!” the young man, Marcus, instructed, the flash popping, leaving purple splotches in Cas’ eyes.

 

“Did you smile?” Cas asked Dean jokingly, and Dean shrugged, wandering away from the photographer towards the dance floor, hands shoved in his pockets. He turned his back to Cas, waiting, and Marcus shook the picture out vigorously under the bright light, standing in front of the dark sheet, and then went to the wall to tack it up.

 

After he was done, Cas went to it for a moment, just to see if Dean had played along at all.

 

Dean’s head was turned towards him, staring at Cas’ face instead of the camera.

 

He was smiling.

 

* * *

 

Cas thought it odd he’d have to explain his dancing abilities. He was a creature built to worship and that included all forms of celebrating his Father’s love. The ritual of dance was an old one and one of the few facets of humanity Castiel had been intimately aware of before he'd dropped to Earth with the Winchesters. His Father’s court was born and bred for such activities, and he had engaged in it on more than one occasion – just never with Dean, a partner with whom he was romantically inclined, and never for the simple act of pleasure.

 

Dean took his hands and planted one on his arm and held the other out, stepping sideways in time with the music.

 

“You know how to two-step?” he asked over the noise, and Cas moved closer to him in order to hear.

 

“I think I can learn,” he said, and Dean smiled crookedly at him, leading him along, bending his head to murmur “slow, slow, quick,” their feet shuffling in the packed dance floor. Castiel quickly gained confidence, pressing his weight against Dean as they moved. Dean raised his eyebrows in challenge and suddenly lifted his arm, Cas effortlessly transitioning and turning under it.

 

“Damn,” Dean laughed, keeping in time to the bass. “You weren’t lying.”

 

If anyone was perturbed by two men dancing together in the boondocks Galilee gymnasium, a few raised eyebrows slipped their way, but no one said a word. In fact Dean was acutely aware of a fair amount of smiles being cast their way by passing couples, the sort of smiles one might give in approval or appreciation.

 

Cas grinned and curled his arm around Dean’s shoulder, their elbows pulling in, their bodies pulling closer, feet mindlessly moving. They weren’t as elaborate as the others around them, but neither noticed. Their eyes stayed locked, expressions shifting into smiles and small laughs and indulgent looks of pride at the prowess of the other. The song faded and Sugar’s voice, slightly hoarse from exercise, slowed everyone to a stop.

 

“Grab your honey and pull em’ close!” She smiled, all well-worn theatrics. “We’re gonna take a little walk, ain’t we Nate?”  
  


“We sure are, Sugar Pie.” Nate bent into his bow, a saccharine sound following, flowing out of his instrument.

 

They fell into the sway, and Dean’s hand slid down Cas’ waist, still holding Cas’ hand in the other, close to his chest. Cas’ head came hesitantly to rest against Dean’s shoulder, staring up at him, Sugar and Nate’s honey-sweet harmony filling the entire room with rich sound. Dean tilted his head down, brushing their noses together. The corners of his mouth turned up and Cas mirrored the expression, his knuckle stroking Dean’s neck in time with the music.

 

 _“_ _I thought I was swinging the world by the tail, I thought I could never be blue. I thought I had been kissed, and I thought I’d been loved, but that was before I met you,”_ Sugar’s voice warbled, and Dean rubbed his thumb over the small of Cas’ back, lost in the gentle strum.

 

“Dean?” Cas said, and Dean hummed, eyes drifting shut, cheek pressed against Cas'.

 

He rubbed, nuzzling, unconsciously.

 

“Do I make you happy?” Castiel asked. “Does – does all this, what we’re doing, kissing, touching, dancing—does it make you happy?”

 

“Why?” Dean said softly, a worry coming between eyes. Cas shifted against him slightly, face pushing back against the hunter’s, lips by his ear.

 

“This…” he paused, the song still wavering through the air. “This makes me very happy, and I want it to last. I want it to be something that we don’t just let go of after a while.”

 

“Don’t worry about that,” Dean said in a hush, and he pulled back to look at Cas’ face, squeezing their hands. He saw Cas’ worried expression and he kissed him gently, without hesitation, right in the middle of the dance floor. Cas gripped his arm and pressed up more firmly before letting Dean go, body relaxing again.

 

He pushed his face into Dean’s neck and breathed relief.

 

The slow song melted into another, the guitar plucking along to Sugar and Nate and the rest of the rocking bodies around them.

 

“You make me happy,” Dean affirmed after a moment, dropping another kiss to Cas’ hairline. And it was true. Under the swinging lanterns on the creaking floor, surrounded by men and women and children swaying to the music—but further back as well, back as far as Dean could remember since the moment they'd first laid eyes on each other. Sometimes there had been disagreement, discord, anger and fear, tumult and turmoil, but in the end—here, yes, and for a very long time, with his friendship and his rebellion and his affection, Castiel had made Dean Winchester a very happy man.

 

Cas nodded, and Dean’s pulse thrummed against his skin, a steady thing.

 

A steady, endless thing.

 

 

* * *

 

There was a bench outside the Galilee dance hall, and a single buzzing street light. Latecomers were filing into the metal doors, bypassing Sam with low laughter and conversation. No one paid him any mind.

 

His cell phone sat with the weight of a brick in his hand.

 

He sighed, running a hand over his face and through his hair. What was he doing? It wasn't as if it was the first time he'd ever called a girl. He was almost thirty years old, for Christ's sake. He shouldn't be feeling butterflies knocking about inside his stomach at the prospect of dialing Lily Francis' number.

 

Sam flipped his phone open and stared at the glowing screen. The wallpaper was something generic, something random—clouds through the window of the Impala, he thought. He vaguely recalled that Cas had taken that picture, bored, on a long drive up from Nevada to Bobby's place, and he'd liked it enough to make it his home screen.

 

Pale streaked clouds and a desert sunset. The time—just after seven. Mentally he laid out America in his mind. Wisconsin wasn't so far off. He wondered what Lily was doing now. Was the festival still on? Would she be grinning her way through dozens of pickers leaving the orchard with their boxes of fruit? Would she be dancing in the band tent with someone who wasn't him, as she had every right to?

 

She'd forgotten him already, he was sure. A woman as beautiful as Lily Francis would never dwell on a strange tall gangly thing like him, there one minute and taking off the next.

 

But then it couldn't hurt to try.

 

She was in his contacts list—he'd foolishly recorded her number there, one of the few names between _Dean_ and _Yann_ that he had. He could just scroll across her name and hit the green call button. It wouldn't take much.

 

God. But what on earth would he _say_?

 

_Hey, Lily, it's me. Sam. The guy who lied about his job and danced with you and kissed you and invited you back to my room for the night and maybe, sort of, fell a little in love with you. I can't stop thinking about you. I'm at a dance and my brother and his maybe-boyfriend are probably two-stepping inside and I wish you were here, or I wish I was there. You were really good at dancing._

 

As if.

 

He could text her. Unless she didn't have a texting plan. Who didn't, these days, he thought, but then you never knew. His luck certainly wouldn't run that way.

 

He flipped the phone closed and groaned, rubbing at his eyes.

 

_Hey, Lily, it's Sam. Someone in the dance hall had perfume that smelled like peaches and I thought about you. You're really beautiful, in case you'd forgotten. I wish I could've stayed in town longer but we had to leave. Something big is happening._

 

It would be three goddamn buttons. Maybe he'd be lucky and get voicemail. Much less awkward, right?

 

_Hey, Lily. It's Sam. We're basically total strangers still, even though you let me kiss you. I have no idea why I'm still thinking about you, but I am. If I wanted to keep in touch, would you..._

 

He could hear the band inside, muffled by the doors, and the cheers and clapping of the people who weren't dancing, and the footfalls of the ones who were. Sugar Byrne singing. Moths were flickering against the streetlight and he was all alone in the parking lot, feeling more indecisive about a simple phone call than he'd felt about anything in a long time.

 

Sam opened his phone and stared at the screen, and then closed it, and pocketed it. He got up and went inside to find his brother and Castiel.

 

 

* * *

 

The music had picked up speed in his absence; Sam slipped into the little milling of spectators on the edge of the floor. He could see Dean and Cas across the way, at the far end of the hall. Their faces were flushed and they looked like they'd been dancing for a fair while.

 

It sounded almost Irish, full-bore folk, the music that was coming down from the bandstand where Sugar and her husband and their friends were playing. The microphone was bad, and Sugar's words were muffled, but from what Sam could tell she wasn't singing in English.

 

The dance, now, was quick and free, and it was the sort of dance that would become a competition before long—nothing malicious, but couples—yes, there it was—couples would drift out of the floor to let the more experienced dancers have the spotlight, the ones who could keep time with the frantic tempo. The spectators were clapping in time and to his surprise, Sam saw that Cas and Dean were not edging off the floor—they were keeping excellent pace with the near-professionals spinning and dipping in the center of the square.

 

They looked positively ecstatic, he thought, smiling at each other, their eyes alight under the swinging lanterns. Dean, he knew, had never been much for dancing, but Cas was surprisingly enthusiastic, and by all appearances pretty damn _good_. They were stepping, turning, swinging and spinning, boots stomping on the wood, wide grins, hands slipping and meeting lightly and quickly, as if they'd been doing this all their lives.

 

A small group of young women and their beaus, next to him, cheered and whooped, and several more couples spun off the floor, and now Cas and Dean were dancing on the edge of the center, the focal point of what seemed nearly everyone, clapping and shouting for them, but they were oblivious, Sam saw, oblivious to the crowds, laughing and lost in figuring out the steps, making it up as they went, Cas leading Dean more than the other way round, leaning from his arm and pulling him in and out.

 

The song was quick and frantic but they blended into the sound like water sliding from a vase, liquid and perfect no matter the imperfection of their steps, and as the music slipped into the crescendo of the piece the spectators whooped and hollered. They matched it evenly, without so much as a stumble, circling and dipping and gazing at one another with absolute stars in their eyes, and Sam found himself smiling at them with a strange sort of pride in his chest. It was good to see Dean's shoulders relaxed, Cas with an easy expression. They looked happy.

 

All at once the song ended with a final clap in unison by the audience, and they stumbled around each other one more time before realizing the song was over, and then came to a stop, breathless, with the last few remaining couples on the floor. The hall burst into applause for the dancers, and Sam saw Sugar grinning down at them with a look of pure pride on her small round face.

 

Dean and Cas were laughing, arms resting in the crooks of one another's elbows, winded and flush-faced. Nate and Sugar reset for another number and the other dancers moved off the floor.

 

Cas took Dean's hand, unashamed, and they followed the others off. Sam ducked behind the spectators to meet them; together they three went for the coolers of water and beer under the metal concessions counter.

 

“Where'd you disappear to?” Dean asked, after he'd opened and downed half a bottle of water in one go. He grinned, slinging his arm around Cas' shoulders, easy as he pleased.

 

“Went to make a phone call,” Sam said, shifting his attention to Cas to change to the subject. “Dude—Cas, I had no idea you could dance like that!”

 

Cas shrugged shyly, tipping sideways into Dean. “Dancing is...natural. To angels.” He rolled his shoulders; there was a faint sheen of sweat on his brow but his breathing was steady, and he was loose and pliant under the weight of Dean's arm.

 

The three of them leaned against the cool metal counter as the lanterns dimmed and the Byrnes moved back into slow songs, southern waltzes and easy steps. Under the lights the dancers moved like fireflies on drowsy summer evenings, smooth and sweet, paper dolls in a puppet show. Like precious clockwork. At the back of the hall the high wall of photographs shone under a patina of Polaroid paper, from the smallest and the oldest to the most recent, glossy and new. Somewhere in that maze of faces Dean and Cas were caught smiling forever, watching the couples sway and swoon on the floor.

 

Dean and Cas didn't dance again, but when they'd taken a seat at one of the tables with a few of the more worn-out couples they stayed close together, bodies gravitating, and Sam saw Dean steal a quick firm kiss against Castiel's temple not long before the lanterns went full up and the Byrnes took their final bows on the stage to thunderous applause.

 

For the first time in a while, Sam knew, Dean wasn't thinking about the girl and boy in Dubois, or the binder full of miracles, or demons in Nebraska. He was tipsy on dancing and easy light.

 

Sam hoped they'd all sleep easy that night. He was certain that they would.

 

 

* * *

 

They drove back, the Byrnes in their truck and the hunters in the Impala, in the glossy dark, under a sky devoid of city light and pinpricked full of stars. There wasn't much talk when they arrived, only the simple instructions of Sugar for her guests—the shower in the upstairs bathroom had a busted handle, had to be turned back and forth a little to get hot water. Breakfast in the morning, and they'd chat about things—implicit in her words were _the birds and the flood._ And to call down if they needed anything, and to get a good night's rest.

 

“So glad to have company,” Sugar said fondly as they all parted ways for the night. Dean thought he heard her murmur “such important company” as he ascended the stairs, but his eyes were heavy, and he couldn't be sure.

 

He realized he hadn't heard a single kingfisher since that morning.

 

The Byrne house creaked pleasantly under their feet as Sam went into the far guest room, throwing a _goodnight_ over his shoulder, and Cas drew Dean into the other and closed the door behind them. The lantern on the sill was lit—Nate must have done it, while Sugar was telling them about the shower—and it was the only light, a soft yellow-orange glow painting watercolor streaks across the bed and the wall.

 

“I still don't know why they want us here,” Dean said, but the conviction in his voice was flat. It was dawning on him that the bed was very small, and that a door, a hall, and heavy plaster were separating him and Cas from Sam and from everyone else. They were alone—more alone than they'd been in a long time, and they'd be alone until morning in the pleasant quiet grandmotherly room at the top of the house that wasn't theirs.

 

Cas was sitting on the bed, unlacing his boots. His dark hair was gently pressed in soft curls against his forehead with sweat and he'd been yawning all the way back. Dean thought that he'd never seen Cas yawn before, but that he liked the way Cas' nose crinkled at the edges when he did.

 

In comfortable silence they pulled off their clothes, down to shirts and boxers. The room was warm on their skin and Cas got up off the bed, surveyed it for a moment as if unsure what to do with it. He pulled back the comforter and the sheets and looked down at it.

 

“It's a very small bed,” he remarked.

 

“We'll squeeze in,” Dean said. He came around Cas and climbed in, shifting over against the wall to give Cas a little room. The lantern flickered just behind Dean's head, casting orange shadows against his cheekbones.

 

Cas followed, his legs and hips jostling against Dean's, and they huffed laughs as they rearranged, trying to find the best position to lie down. Somewhere in the confusion Cas turned his head and kissed Dean, slow and full, on the mouth, and all their movement stilled.

 

Everything about that night, Cas thought, had been so simple. So easy. To dance with Dean, to lead him, to wrestle into bed with him, to kiss him. It felt the way that orders had felt, once, in Heaven. Un-extraordinary and wondrous.

 

His hand came up to touch Dean's cheek, and Dean shifted, lay down on his side, pulling Cas with him. They lay flush, body to body, chest to chest, mouths open and moving against each other. No hurry. No rush. Dean tasted of cool water and slight salt when Cas licked his way into his mouth, pliant and wide, comfortable. Fluid. There was nothing to this, not really. It was natural. It was in their bones to kiss like this.

 

Cas let his hands fall, to pull up the comforter over them; it settled cotton-warm on their shoulders and he slipped under it to hold Dean, find the soft round contour of his side, the gentle roll of his stomach. Dean touched him, let his hand rest against the pulse in Castiel's throat that grew stronger every day, traced the plane of his chest that fell away from his collarbone. They rested for a moment, breathing, mouths nearly touching, still, exchanging air; with hazy eyes they looked at one another and smiled, gently, kissed again, and again, and Cas found his leg sliding between Dean's, their cold feet tangling, shifting against the sheets with the soft sound of linen brushing.

 

Dean's arms encircled him, natural, easy, pulled him closer, deeper into the kiss, the kiss, their eyelashes tangling, now, the spotting colored dark behind their eyelids, the orange paint-daub of the lantern splitting against their eyes in the tender black. There. No rush. They had the whole wide night to lie there in the cramped twin bed, bodies pressed together, Castiel's bony hips against the softer push of Dean's. Dean's hands cupping his shoulder-blades as if cradling wings. Castiel's touch, exploring, mapping, learning Dean's body, just the slightest bit. They had all the time in the world. They had all the God-given days in the universe. No hurry. No haste.

 

“You relaxed,” Cas whispered on the spare end of a gasp, smiling, reaching up to stroke Dean's hair from his eyes, trace the lantern-light on his cheekbones. “You weren't so tense tonight.”

 

Dean hummed in absent agreement, kissed him again, the corner of his mouth, a sweet little thing.

 

“Never thought I'd got out dancing in my life,” Dean said, against his skin, quietly. “I think that helped some.”

 

“Did you have a good time?”

 

“You know I did.” In the dim orange light Castiel's eyes were sloe-dark and starry, heavy-lidded. “I told you. It made me happy.”

 

“That's all I want, you know,” Cas said, slipping bluntly into honesty. The warm edge to his voice slid, haphazard, for just a moment—knifelike sincerity, an instant. “All I want is for you and Sam to be happy.”

 

Dean stared at him, the bony slim thing in his arms, his angel—loyal to a fault, too damn good at kissing, too damn good at dancing. Too damn dear to his heart, he was beginning to realize, these days.

 

“I know,” he said. “We know.”

 

“Whatever happens I'm glad we found this,” Cas said, reaching up to brush away a stray eyelash on Dean's cheek. “I'm glad we figured this out. Between us.”

 

“Me too.”

 

All trains of thought were lost, then, after that. Dean reached up to the lantern on the sill, twisted the little kerosene key, and the flame flickered down to dimness, sputtered lightly to death. Velvet dark draped down on them and Dean sought Castiel's mouth again within it, aware only of the way the angel opened up beside him, the movement of their legs together under the comforter, the smooth, the easy, the tidal flow of the way they fit together. Castiel's hand in the valley of his side. The smell of lavender on the pillow. The night.

 

* * *

 

Cas woke the next morning to the faint sound of music wafting in from under the door, and the brush of sunlight on his eyes from the curtainless window above the bed.

 

For a long time he didn't move. He and Dean had fallen asleep in a loose sort of embrace, arms around each other, legs tangled, and his head was tucked beneath Dean's chin; the morning was cool and the light was thin and he felt as if every bone in his body had settled perfectly in place, that moving would disrupt some kind of sacred barrier in the air.

 

Distantly he could hear the sound of something frying, could smell what was probably bacon. He thought of how Yann Olsson's mother had served them at her table as their guests and how good that food had been and slowly he extricated himself from Dean's arms, sat up on the edge of the bed very quietly to pull his T-shirt down where it had been rucked up in the night as they'd kissed.

 

Dean made a soft sleepy noise behind him and Cas turned his head. Dean yawned and his brow furrowed and when he opened his eyes they were green and glassy with dreams.

 

“Morning,” he said, stifling another yawn, and sat up. “'S the radio on or somethin'?”

 

“Downstairs, I think,” Cas said. He got to his feet, toes cracking on the floor, and found his jeans in the corner, balanced precariously on one leg to pull them on the other.

 

Dean got up as well, stiffly, rolling his shoulders and rubbing at his eyes. He sniffed, watched hazily as Cas got dressed in his clothes from yesterday. The music under the door was a little louder, now, and there was a rumble as the pipes across the corridor came alive—Sam must have been taking a shower.

 

“You should get dressed,” Cas said. “We're guests here, remember.”

 

He shook out his shirt, the dull green plaid one that Sam had given him several states and months ago, and was about to pull it on when he felt Dean's arms wrap around his waist from behind.

 

“Dance with me,” Dean mumbled, into his neck. “Come on.”

 

Cas wriggled, pushing against his arm. “Not now, Dean, I think they're making breakfast for us.”

 

“Just a little.”

 

The angel scoffed, twisting, and wound up face to face with Dean, the small of his back caught in the hunter's grip, strong hands gentle against his hips. Dean kissed him, lazily, still half-drunk on sleep, and Cas sighed into his mouth, settling, resting his own hands in the crevasses of Dean's elbows.

 

They swayed awkwardly in place to the absent tune of radio downstairs, the barest hints of melody. Outside the sun was still low in the sky, and morning birds chirped in the tree past the window, but they weren't kingfishers. The rolling Mississippi glimmered like silver far off and away and they danced, stupidly, languidly, just for a little while, in the corner of the guest room at the top of the house.

 

* * *

 

Sugar Byrne cracked an egg into the bacon grease. The whites immediately began to sizzle. She tossed the shell away and watched the shimmering yolk with impatient eyes, foot shifting along with the radio. Static fuzzed in and out and Nate put his hands on her soft waist, bending to kiss her cheek.

 

“Sugar Pie, you know making those eyes at that egg won’t make it cook any quicker,” he said, laughing, and she sighed, glancing over at the counter crammed with food.

 

“That poor boy’s appetite,” she sighed again, shaking her head. “I hope I made enough – if I can help him just a little…”

 

She trailed off, attention diverted to the egg that was finally cooked enough to flip. She smiled in momentary victory: the yolk hadn’t run.

 

Nate nodded along with her, buttering the toast that had just popped up.

 

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate it, sweet pea,” he said. The knife made a pleasant sound as it scraped against the bread. “Heck of a trouble though, being that hungry all the time,” he marveled.

 

“I’m sure it’s miserable,” Sugar said, nodding, slipping the egg off onto a plate and cracking another into the pan with a practiced flick of her wrist. “Oh, but they did have such a good time last night. You could see in their sweet faces how much they needed it. Everything must be trembling under their feet, getting them all so worked up.”

 

“Heck of a thing they’re after,” Nate finished, halving the toast and putting it on the plate with the egg, rubbing the crumbs off of his long fingers. “This ready to go to the table?”

 

“Mhmm,” Sugar hummed, lost in thought. Her husband took the plate from the counter and she glanced at him, watching him go. She rested her spatula against the edge of the pan.

 

“Nate?” she called after him calmly, and Nate set the plates down on the table, the red-checked tablecloth a bit smudged in the watery shadow of the half-drawn shades.

 

“What’s on your mind?”

 

Sugar waited a moment before responding.

 

“You know, Kathleen Meyer came asking about doves the other day and I burst right into tears…”

 

“What’s _really_ on your mind?” Nate asked, chuckling, walking back to her, placing his hands on her round shoulders. He could see her little pretty mouth was pressed tightly together. Her curls brushed against his cheek as he placed his chin on the crown of her head, watching her cook.

 

“I never thought it’d be so obvious,” she said quietly. “Or come knocking on our door—heavens above. I never thought they’d wear everything the way they do. Right in their eyes, Nate – he has the bluest eyes.”

 

There was a creak above them and she glanced up, concerned. Nate did as well, rolling his eyes to the dull movement over their heads.

 

“Why, I do believe they might be dancing,” he murmured, listening to the footfall.

 

“I told Kathleen the doves sing so pretty this year,” Sugar whispered. “Just makes you want to cry.”

 

Nate bent to move her hair aside and kiss her neck.

 

* * *

 

“Sammy! Breakfast!” Dean said between laying knocks on the door. Cas hovered at the top of the stairs, his hand fitted round the bannister, leaning back from it slightly, playfully testing his weight against it. There was a muffled response from Sam’s room and Dean smiled, stepping back when the door swung open.

 

Sam’s hair was damp and tousled from his shower and Dean smirked at how too-tall he was for the room he was in. He must have bumped his fingers on the ceiling fan at least a dozen times changing the night before and that morning.

 

“Come on, cutie pie,” Dean teased. “I’m starving.”

 

Sam rolled his eyes at the taunt, following his older brother into the hallway, trailing after him and Castiel as they rumbled down the stairs. As they neared the bottom, Dean crowded Cas and pressed against him, their steps falling in to time. Dean said something Sam couldn’t distinguish and Cas huffed a laugh, pushing him away slightly, stepping down to the thin floor.

 

Sam watched them pass through the violet light of the living room to the kitchen.

 

“Do I smell bacon?” Dean drawled, and there was a happy laugh that had to be Sugar’s in response. Sam realized that Cas had hung back, letting Dean go ahead. He waited patiently for Sam, watching the hunter thoughtfully.

 

“Sam?”  
  


“Oh –yeah, coming,” Sam said, striding over to Cas, carefully navigating along the spidery-legged end tables and glass-paned curio cabinet. The rug sprawled on the floor and the curtains ruffled with a light breeze. There was a scrape of trees against the outside wall and a rattle of leaves and the opalescent spray of color on the baseboard from a trinket hanging in the window, the pale summer sun playing through it.

 

“Thanks for waiting,” Sam said, smiling, the two of them moving into the yellow film of the kitchen to sit at the table. Into the sizzling sound of things being dropped into a skillet, Dean’s knee jutting out from the round table; the washed-too-many-times softness of the checkered table cloth; the nod of daffodils in the window box just over the sink; the mottled glasses and dull silverware positioned in front of the chairs; the stack of fancy paper napkins in the ceramic holder; the glossed gleam of blue Dutch china tiles displayed on the buttery walls. Sam could see that Dean had been offered a glass of milk and it had been half-drained already.

 

Dean tinkered with the lazy susan, moving it back and forth minutely, watching it rotate in the center of the table.

 

“You ever seen one of these?” he asked, delighted by the little invention. Wordlessly his brother leaned forward, Cas slipping behind his chair to sit in the one beside it, hand dragging over Dean’s shoulders and back as he went. His hand stayed there, scratching mindlessly at the back of Dean’s head, while he surveyed the table.

 

Sam couldn’t say that he had.

 

* * *

 

“I tried to make a little bit of everything!” Sugar said brightly, setting down a basket of biscuits, arranging the white handkerchief around it to keep the heat from escaping. She wasn’t exaggerating – the table was packed. Trays of sausage, slices of bread with jam and orange marmalade, the fried eggs that everyone received and strips of thick-cut bacon.

 

Cas eyed the orange slices of sweet melon and found his mouth watering.

 

“Now, you all want to talk rivers,” Nate said, cutting right to the chase, pressing into the yolk of his egg with the prongs of his fork and dipping his toast in it. He raised his head and smiled around the table, the picture of ease. Sugar settled beside him, draping her napkin over her lap and arranging her elbows off the edge of the table, knife and fork held delicately in her small hands. “So let’s talk rivers.”

 

There was a collective inhale from the three hunters and Nate crunched his toast while Sugar swirled cream into her coffee.

 

“Well,” Sam began, looking at Dean and Cas, making sure he hadn’t cut one of them off. “I think we want to know where all this started. We know a little about Amos Porter, but it’s hard to really understand the rest. Of anything, really. Why any of this is happening, _if_ anything's happening.”

 

Nate nodded and leaned back in his chair, folding his hands over his flat stomach, thumbs caught in the straps of his suspenders. So old-fashioned, Sam thought.

 

“Now, I wasn’t there, so I can’t tell you for certain, but if you ask me, this was around way before Amos Porter. If you’re asking for my opinion, it’s been around as long as long is long. As long as there’s been a river there’ve been stories. As long as there’ve been slaves there have been slave songs. As long as there’s been lovers there’s been stories about love. Amos Porter just packaged it prettier.”

 

Sugar hummed in agreement, quietly eating.

 

“So – Amos Porter’s book…did he write it himself?” Cas asked. It was becoming harder and harder to discern where the authority lay. Was it the book or these anecdotal lessons, these traditions, these diverse interpretations, that were telling them what they needed to know? Where did the miracles spring from—were they miracles at all?

 

“Can’t say.” Nate shrugged. “But that book was something special. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was collected stories from the river folk, maybe it was God’s word himself, I don’t know.”

 

“You don’t _know_? But it’s your _religion,_ ” Dean said, voice slightly accusing. Nate steepled his fingers.

 

“Nobody got a look at that book, son. Amos Porter just talked out of it. Some of the stories folks knew in one version or another, some they didn’t. He gave it some consistency, tied it all up into something people could tell from start to finish.”

 

“Your stories, the ones you heard growing up, then—they’re more like dialects. Amos Porter’s book is some kind of full language, some kind of complete system. If someone could find that, they’d be able to reason out everything, not just the bits and pieces,” Sam said, reasoning it out as always.

 

Nate smiled.

 

“Explanation suits me just fine!” he chuckled.

 

Cas saw the way Dean’s features darkened. He was staring broodingly at his plate, silent.

 

“So,” Cas began, glancing away from Dean’s stormy face. “The birds?”

 

“The birds.” Nate half-laughed. “Well, as far as the stories we’ve heard say, they’re heralding a meeting. Way I see it, the common tradition, the engagement part, that came from our side of the fence. Trickled into people’s ears and started making its way into the public. Kingfishers mean the grand wedding. _Out of a thousand wings will come one. From the flock, one shall remain, and from the river, one shall come._ ”

 

“A wedding,” Cas repeated, slowly.

 

“Mighty fine wedding.” Nate’s voice lilted. “A wedding of all things. Earth and sky. Water and air. Everything coming together, beginning as one.”

 

“ _Beginning_ ,” Sam stressed. “Not ending.”

 

“As far as I know, no such thing as ending, but I only know what gran knew. What my family knew, and that’s what I choose to believe.”

 

“Why now?” Dean snapped, suddenly, almost bitterly. “Why now of all times? If it was so great, why didn’t it happen ages ago? Why wait on a miracle like that?”

 

Nate’s eyes were gentle on Dean. Patient.

 

“Sometimes the miracle isn’t about the _miracle_ ,” Nate answered. “Sometimes a miracle is more about the work it takes to make it. A miracle could depend on a lot of little choices, a lot of little things before it becomes a miracle. A lot of days of grinding through it all, a lot of days of waiting for something to happen and trying for it in the meantime.” He looked at him, hard. “I think you know that.”

 

Dean blanched.

 

“What good is hard work…” Sam said vacantly, hearing Lily’s voice as clear as day in his head. He shut his mouth, avoiding Dean’s eyes.

 

“What was that?” Dean said, sharply turning to Sam, and Castiel touched his hand.

 

Unlike many times before on this grand trip, unlike the touches before where Dean had shrugged Cas off, had dismissed him, Dean immediately grabbed Cas’ hand, holding it hard. He gripped it, and Cas stroked the back of his hand with his thumb, pulling their tangled fingers gently under the table where it wouldn’t distract. Dean’s bristled body eased slightly, sinking tiredly in his seat.

 

“…well, uh,” Sam cleared his throat. “Lily.”

 

Sugar tilted her head.

 

“This girl that I met – that _we_ met – her family owns an orchard. It was gifted to them and for years, like fifty years, they slaved away over it, and then it just took root and now they have the biggest harvest in the country. She said the same thing. She said that the hard work, the way they learned to work the land before it finally paid off, taught them how to take care of it once it did.”

 

“Things are moving,” Nate said softly, his voice slipping into a smoky tone. “Things are shifting. All around – in the trees. The water. It’s moving. Little things coming to pass. Coming to be. Little steps being taken.”

 

“But who is _making_ the steps?” Dean said tiredly. “Who the hell is running all this?”

 

“I don’t know how to answer you on that. I don’t know who is behind all of it, but you know, the river still rolls on. She’s been rolling for longer than any of us, and if anybody’s got a story to be believed it’s a river’s story, and the river sings about a change. A change is coming. Things are going to be different, things are going to shed their skins, things won’t look the same. Won’t be the same. Two being one. ”

 

“A wedding,” Cas repeated distantly.

 

“A mighty fine wedding,” Nate finished, and then he laughed, suddenly, the sound booming around the kitchen, a giant, joyful sound. “A mighty fine wedding, and we’re all just guests!”

 

Sugar covered her smile with her hand, looking out the window, avoiding the three confused faces before her.

 

 

* * *

 

The morning drifted, like a sailboat caught in an errant breeze, after that—breakfast was delicious and Dean ate as much as he could, trying to distract himself from the buzzing in his arms, from the summer wind outside and the gentle, more normal conversation that had sprouted. Sam and Cas talking, mostly, asking about the town, what it was like during the flood times. He ignored them.

 

Now what did they have? Just a little more of the same old story. A wedding, now. What the hell did that even mean? And it was still there, the lingering question none of them had been brave enough to broach or admit to—what it all had to do with Dean.

 

The way that Sugar kept looking at him, across the table, in small glances, had confirmed it, at least in his mind. Whatever it was, it had to do with him. There was too much pity and longing in her face for it to be anything otherwise.

 

They finished the meal, and Cas got up to help Sugar and Nate clear it away; Sugar waved the brothers into the sitting room, told them to put their feet up, relax. Plan their day.

 

Cas picked up the plate that had held the bacon and followed her into the kitchen, into the warm light and the creamy tile.

 

“Thank you again for having us,” Cas said as she turned on the tap and took dish soap from under the counter. “I don't think we'll be in town much longer.”

 

“Oh, that's alright, sweetheart,” Sugar said. Nate came in and left more dishes on the counter at her elbow and then went into the front of the house. “It was our pleasure. I tell you, nothing gives me more joy than hosting strangers. Peculiar, maybe, but it's what we do here.”

 

“Are we, though?” Cas asked, abruptly, unable to keep the question back anymore. “Strangers?”

 

Sugar paused, her arms lined with streaks of soap bubbles. She didn't look at him.

 

“It's only that you asked if we'd met,” he continued, quietly. “And last night I heard you call us _important company._ Why?”

 

She sighed, scrubbing absently at a white china dish, gazing down into the dizzy suds.

 

“He's afraid it's all about him, isn't he?” she said softly, after a moment. She kept her eyes at her work, swallowing reflexively. “I reckon you boys have seen big things like this before.”

 

Castiel's silence served as agreement. He wasn't sure how much this woman knew about them, about the things that had happened in the world, but he had a feeling she gathered enough.

 

“Fact is, it _is_ about him.” Sugar set the plate into the other side of the sink, clanking gently against the floating dishes there in the washing-water. “It's about all of you.”

 

Cas glanced into the empty hall, the sunlight shifting on its wall. He could hear conversation from the front of the house, Nate and the boys.

 

Carefully he said, “We've been hearing a lot about catfish.”

 

“Well, now.” Sugar smiled, a little sadly, to herself. “That's the thing of it.”

 

“How can it be that we've never heard this story before? If it's so grand and so important.” For want of something to do with his hands more than anything else Cas came to stand beside her and pulled a dishcloth from the handle of the stove, pulling a cup out of the water to dry. “I've been—around for a very long time and I've never once heard that story.”

 

“Secret things tend to hide best from the ones they're about,” Sugar said. She paused, looking at him as he worked the towel inside the cup, his pale bony borrowed wrist protruding from the warped glass, fingers dull inside.

 

“You could tell us everything,” Cas said, meeting her eyes. It wasn't a question; it was a fact. “You know a lot more than you're telling.”

 

“You stars,” Sugar said, fondly, reaching up with a wet finger to gently touch Castiel's cheek, smiling sadly. “Always so good at reading the faces you see.”

 

Cas blinked, swallowing. That feeling was back, the feeling from the morning in Greenacre when Lily Francis had told them those words, _star and catfish,_ the sensation of goosebumps. It was the heat of the morning in the room. There were no hairs raised on his arms.

 

“Stars,” he repeated, numbly. He could see the lines tattooed into her palm, out of the corner of his eye.

 

“It isn't my story to tell,” she said.

 

 

* * *

 

In the end, they did leave Galilee that afternoon. The itch was back in Dean and he could hear, down the road, the kingfishers chattering again, and he was more than ready to be out of their territory. All the slow easy softness of the night before seemed to have been shredded away, like fingernails through tulle.

 

“Where are you headed next?” Nate asked the brothers, standing on the near edge of departure in the sitting room. “Way I see it, if you're here for things like birds and floods, you must be chasing it down the river.”

 

“We're not sure,” Sam said, glancing at Dean, who was refusing to speak. He looked extremely uncomfortable, suddenly, in the tiny room. “We have...a few places we could go.”

 

“Iowa,” Nate said, nodding. Dean looked at him sharply, Dubois ringing to life in his head again. “Le Beau,” he continued, and Dean relaxed, turning his face away again. “My, I'll tell you, it used to be stories from that place came upriver all the time. Terrible things.”

 

“Terrible things?” Sam echoed, and he exchanged glances with Dean. _Terrible things_ seemed more up their alley than anything had in ages.

 

“Oh—well, I say, _used_ to be. Right down the road, about a day's drive.” Nate gestured out the window, past the screen porch. “It was the town misfortune. Children drowning in the river all months of the year. As long as anyone can remember. Swallowed 'em up like it was starving for them. Incredible, really, the way they used to die. The danger of a river town, I suppose. But not anymore.” He thumbed at his lower lip, nodding to himself. “Not anymore.”

 

“Miraculous,” Dean mumbled, a little bitterly.

 

“And there's the trees, of course,” Nate said, more to himself than to them, tucking his thumbs into his belt loops. “Yes, sir. Those cherry trees blooming all the year long. Now if the river giving up its children ain't miraculous, those trees certainly are.”

 

Sam opened his mouth to ask what he meant, but the hall floor creaked and Sugar came out, Cas trailing behind her, looking stiff with worry. He drifted to Dean, and they met eyes, Dean's gaze silently asking what was wrong. Cas shifted on his feet and shook his head, an unspoken _later._

 

“Well,” Sugar said, her hands resting flat on her heavy hips, “I take it you boys are off, then.”

 

“Looks like it,” Sam said, smiling politely.

 

“May I just thank you again for staying with us,” Sugar said, touching fingers lightly to her mouth. “It isn't often we get a chance to extend our hospitality to strangers, much less strangers asking such big questions!”

 

“It was kind of you to have us,” Cas said, his voice a little faint, as if it were mechanical. He looked nearly about as ready to shiver out of his skin as Dean did; gently and surreptitiously Dean touched his wrist, a cool brush of calming fingers.

 

The Byrnes shook their hands, murmuring goodbyes and _come again soon_ _s_ , and they watched the trio leave the house, climb down the porch steps towards the Impala gleaming gloss-black under the pale summer sun.

 

“Did you tell him?” Nate asked, sliding an arm around Sugar's waist in front of the living room window. Her fingers still hung beside her lips, like a fond mother watching her children slip away into the sky.

 

“I did,” she said. “I hope he understood.”

 

“In all my days I never thought I'd live to see it.”

 

“Mmm.” Sugar leaned into her husband's touch; the three hunters backed slowly out of the drive and took the wide turn onto the rough country highway, creeping out of sight. “September, I think. Don't you?”

 

“Oh, I do, Sugar Pie. I most certainly do.”


	5. Le Beau, IA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Our existence deforms the universe. That's responsibility.”

Dean dug his hand into the bag of potato chips he was burning through and tossed a few back, crunching them and wiping the crumbs on his jeans. Sam came out of the convenience store, the doors sliding back together behind him, carrying two apples and a bottle of water. He tossed one of the pieces of fruit to Cas and looked on his brother worriedly.

 

“You sure you don’t want me to get you an apple?” he offered, holding up the Red Delicious and lifting his eyebrows.

 

“Hell no,” Dean said, sucking the salt from his finger.

 

Castiel blinked at him and then took a bite, crunching the skin thoughtfully.

 

“So what did the cashier say?” Cas asked after swallowing.

 

They’d made excellent time from Galilee and had arrived in Le Beau much earlier than they’d expected. The sun was just reaching its evening low, and beyond the highway the river drifted along, tangerine light glimmering over the surface.

 

“She said the trees are in a grove on the east side of town facing the water and that it’s like a park or something. There’s a little tea house nearby and the guy that runs it takes care of them.”

 

“A tea house?” Dean groaned. He could just imagine it – Cas and Sam making him cram into some hoity-toity lace nightmare. He could already smell wilting roses and hear the judgmental titters of old women with dead things glued to the brims of their hats. He shivered and leaned over to toss his empty chip bag into the trashcan on the sidewalk. He shook his leg out restlessly and stretched his back, spine twisting stiffly, refusing to pop.

 

“Dammit,” he mumbled, trying harder to get the relief he wanted. The pinch wouldn’t leave and he sighed, giving up and making the short step back to his brother.

 

“It’s supposed to be really good or something. The tea.” Sam shrugged, flipping out his phone and checking the time and then replacing it in his pocket.

 

“I’m _not_ doing tea-time!” Dean insisted. They all pulled themselves back into the car and slammed the doors in unison.

 

Cas crunched his apple and pulled one leg up, resting his cheek against his knee and looking out the window as they drove into town. Dean reached over surreptitiously to pinch his thigh, rather close to his ass, and when Cas turned to flash the hunter a look Dean’s eyes were planted on the road, face completely impassive. Cas pursed his lips, catching on to his game.

 

“You wanna put up for the night or look around?” Dean said, before Cas could call him out. He fidgeted his hand on the wheel and clenched and unclenched his hands.

 

“Yeah, let’s just call it,” Sam yawned from the back, rubbing his eyes. “I’m beat.”

 

“You haven’t done anything all day!” Dean said, tapping his foot against the side of the car. “You sure you want to just lie around in some motel room?”

 

“Uh, yes, actually. I’ve been stuffed in this car for nearly six hours and I’d like a bed to stretch out on,” Sam answered, tone disenchanted at the prospect of walking anywhere.

 

Dean sighed and rubbed the back of his neck.

 

“The sooner we sleep the earlier our start tomorrow, right?” Cas said, and Dean rolled his shoulders and adjusted his arm where it rested out the window, the earthy smell of the river drifting in.

 

Dean breathed it in. His lungs felt fuzzy, like a chest cold, like when they were little and Sam would fall asleep halfway on top of him, heavy head resting right on his breastbone. He recalled one tired English class in some nameless town, the teacher waxing poetic on the author’s use of the senses. Some girl in the front had mentioned that memories were actually most accurately recalled by specific scents...

 

He shoved the thought down as quickly as he could.

 

“Sammy.”

 

His little brother lifted his eyes to the rear-view mirror. “What?”

 

“She say anything about those kids?”  
  


“She says there’s a current that runs parallel to the town – some kind of weird undertow. Sucks kids down as soon as they fall in, but that recently they haven’t been happening as much.”

 

“So what do you think, water wraith? More monsters being goody-goody for no damn reason?”

 

“I don’t know,” Sam said quietly. “I mean, it kind of could be natural…the current could change on its own, couldn’t it?”

 

“Sam has a point,” Cas said, not lifting his cheek from his leg. He was glad Dean was going along with Sam’s plea for a hotel room; watching the river had left him feeling tired and had dulled his thoughts down to whispers.

 

“Where do the trees come in, is what I’m wondering,” Dean sighed, stretching his arm against the Impala’s hard roof, grimacing. “Were they put in before or after all this?”

 

“Oh, way before,” Sam said.

 

“Let me guess,” Dean interrupted. “Late 1800s.”

 

“Early 1900s but I’ll give it to you. They were a gift from some rich Japanese dude to the rich white dude who founded the town. Maurice Le Beau. They had some kind of business exchange during the Meiji period. That’s what Yann’s binder says about it.”

 

“There was an article in there?” Cas asked, curious.

 

Sam nodded, eyes closed against the headrest. “Yep.”

 

“What the hell, then?” Dean griped. He was getting tired of constantly wondering how the hell everything was connected.

 

“I don’t know Dean, I’ll look it up tomorrow.”

 

Dean sighed heavily and, after a few more breaths, rolled up the window.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Mr. Le Beau had not been a terribly opulent man. He had lived in a simple house near the textile mill he ran, and did not buy his children expensive things. When he was asked by a friend to establish the mill in some prospect of Kyoto, he had hesitated, uninterested in leaving his family alone for two years. His colleague had promised him a handsome sum of money and a lasting relationship with the budding overseas empire.

 

He had been particularly successful in Japan. They had offered him the trees as a sign of good will, and perhaps a healthy dose of buttering up to the American giants.

 

Le Beau returned home, and six months later, forty cherry trees had arrived at his door. They were immediately put down by the river, and with his yearly bonus, Le Beau had transformed the whole grove into a promenade, with real marble fountains and a river walk.

 

That December the petals had never fallen. They froze, suspended in ice for weeks, but with the thaw they shook themselves out in all their splendor, the air fragrant with their scent, and the whole town had marveled.

 

Le Beau asked the young man who had come over the ocean with the trees what the reason was. If the cherry trees in Kyoto were also so enchanted, their blossoms lingering long past the grey winter and into the verdant spring again, never ceasing, never changing. The young man, Matsu Kami, did not say much, but assured Mr. Le Beau that the rich river water was most likely to blame. It was strong, like blood, he said.

 

It was water for the very soul of things.

 

“Try some for yourself,” he had insisted, offering the towering man a small cup of some pale green brew, both of them kneeling in the customary fashion on the tatami mats of his small and orderly home on the river, near enough to the trees to be sure none would be stolen during the night.

 

Mr. Le Beau drank the cup and was so moved by the taste that he demanded that he be served it every day, the effect was so invigorating.

 

Or so the story goes.

 

 

* * *

 

They slept hard, rolling out of bed far later than any of them had thought they would. It was after a late breakfast and a half-hearted perusal of the local newspaper that they finally found themselves parking in the small lot at the base of the grove. The trees were down at the farthest end, a streak of pale rose against the horizon.

 

The sun had settled noon-high and the cloudless blue coupled itself to the curve of the earth, extending for miles in all directions. The air was hot and the humidity had yet to burn off, so they had all shed their respective outermost layer into the trunk, facing the walk ahead of them.

 

Cas scratched his elbow, the pale white skin nearly glowing under the aggressive sunlight, unused to it being so uncovered. Boarding with Winchesters usually meant several miles of clothing between oneself and the elements to save on packing space, and the basic premise of it was _better to shed than to have to go out and get more._

 

That afternoon, though, they had stripped themselves down to their T-shirts and jeans and awkward arms.

 

“Who are we looking for again?”

 

“His name is Mr. Matsu Kami,” Sam said, referencing the slip of paper the woman at the motel front desk had given him when he’d asked about more towels, and subsequently the town's local flora. “He’s the gardener or whatever, so if anybody’s _supposed_ to know about the trees it should be him. Apparently he’s, like, ancient too. Been here since the dawn of time, or something.”

 

“Don’t hold your breath on that one,” Dean muttered, already convinced they were walking straight into another loose end.

 

They hiked up the short incline to the flat grass-and-brick walk of the park, the path extending all the way into the blotch of pink that must have been the trees.

 

They ambled; the park was empty because of weekday work schedules and a lack of playground equipment. It was not an uncomfortable quiet, though. There was a tranquility there, an organic peace that differed from stillness of houses, or bedrooms at the tops of said houses.

 

Fat yellow bees buzzed around thick beds of flowers and the sound of traffic faded with every step they took further down the promenade, past dark green lampposts and heavy wrought-iron ended benches. Fountains trickled water somewhere, down some winding side way, and a white gazebo arched over one of the thick green lawns, its latticework heavy with pruned honeysuckle. Butterflies flapped their wings and drifted back and forth across the path, lighting on snap-dragons and the bell shaped blooms of the gladiolus and the fox glove.

 

“He takes care of all this himself?” Cas marveled, looking around at the extensive grounds.

 

Sam nodded. “The woman said he lived up here with his dog and his granddaughter. Maybe she helps?”

 

“A dog? _Wonderful_ ,” Dean said; he could only imagine what kind of dog an old fruity dude who ran a tea house would keep. Probably a little one that yapped a lot and made you want to punt it like a football.

 

The air shifted, and the most divine fragrance enveloped them, the trees very suddenly near, as if their steps had magically become longer, pulling them in.

 

The trees were arranged in two long rows of twenty, lining the path, and at the end they broadened out into a sweeping curve along the river both upstream and downstream. It was all seen through the tunnel of trees, their branches arcing over the brick path, tangled and twined, growing in and amongst one another until all that remained was a ceiling of pink.

 

Their heads automatically tipped back to gaze up as they stepped under the canopy of blushing rose and seashell-soft flush. The wind shimmered through the blossoms, and they fell like snow, scattering through the air, the dark wood branches creaking and bending in the soft swirl of air.

 

A petal caught on Sam’s hair and another drifted into Cas’ palm, the florid ceiling waving with soft tremors of movement. There was a hush; the world was muffled in the wake of the whispering boughs. The trio stopped walking and merely stood, staring up, consumed.

 

Dean looked around at the flurries, the eddies of pale pink, spiraling to the ground, resting in the grass and in their hair and on the path, caught up in the momentary gust and then settling in blowzy patterns on the red brick. He watched them, and as his eyes lit around at the motes of falling petals he caught sight of a teetering figure at the very farthest edge.

 

“Is that him?” he said, and Sam shook his head loose of flowers, Cas curling his fingers around a bloom and then letting it go to the wind again. They all trained their eyes to the feeble frame of an old, old man moving slowly between the trees, carrying a pair of heavy shears under one arm. He stopped, lifting them up over his head, and snipped, pruning meticulously at the branches dripping with flowers above him.

 

Needing no more confirmation, they fell into step again, moving deeper into the passage of cherry trees.

 

The little old man was not as little as they had originally anticipated; he was small, yes, slight in frame, but his shoulders were straight and his posture was not bent despite his obvious age. His hair was a mature silver, but this could only be told from what was seen at his temples; he was wearing a broad brimmed hat that covered the rest.

 

His back was still turned to them as they approached, his frail arms proving their strength each time he raised up his shears and clipped off another offensive twig. The discarded bits of tree landed at his feet, and Dean stiffened as a small red dog appeared from nowhere to pounce on one of the remains, curled tail wagging rapidly in delight.

 

“Excuse me!” Sam said loudly, hoping the old man could hear him.

 

He clipped another branch and Cas swore he could see a tiny shake of his shoulders, as though he were laughing.

 

“Sir?” Sam tried again, stepping forward a little.

 

The gardener still did not reply but looked down at his little red dog and said something to it, his voice lightly scolding in an affectionate way.

 

He sighed, and the dog dropped the stick it was worrying, coming to its master’s side. The dog looked up at him, wiggling and squirming with apparent excitement, and a tiny bark escaped its pointed snout, delicate paws dancing on the grass, bouncing around.

 

“Matte, Momo-chin,” the old man chuckled when the dog came and stood against his leg, pawing at his loose trousers, barking again. He bent down and scratched its ears, cupping his hand around its nose and shaking its head.

 

“Hey!” Dean said impatiently, and the old man stilled.

 

He turned, looking up finally. His face became blank, the wrinkled, sun-tanned skin pulling taut at the edges of his mouth and nose. He stood, eyes raking over the three of them, staying the longest on Cas. From his weathered features peered two kohl-black eyes, and they dismissed the three young men almost immediately. He pulled his hat off and tucked the sheers under his arm once more, the little dog dancing at his feet, unable to decide if it would lie or stand on the soft grass.

 

“Are you Matsu Kami?” Dean asked gruffly, and the man settled his eyes on him, stepping nearer. The dog hung back and chirped and then came forward again, crowding its owner.

 

“Yes,” he replied in a calm, clear voice.

 

“We were wondering if we could talk to you about the trees,” Cas said, tone at least more well-intentioned than Dean’s.

 

Matsu Kami’s stare did not break from Dean.

 

“Yes,” he repeated, a tiny, queer smile working its way onto his face. He glanced back to Cas and then to Sam, stroking his shaven face with one hand, observing. “I can speak for them.” His voice was lightly accented and the syllables bled together in an eerie sort of way—the kind of voice one might use the middle of forest.

 

He said something to his dog again in soft Japanese, and it whined, spinning in a tight circle and bumping its head against his leg. He chuckled, adjusted his shears, and without warning began walking away.

 

“Excuse me,” Sam called again, a little perturbed by his abrupt departure.

 

The hot summer wind rustled through the trees, a soft humming sound drifting down with another shower of petals.

 

The gardener didn’t answer but kept walking, his little dog trotting at his side, pausing every few paces to stop and sniff something, tail whipping at the air, or glance its black eyes back at the three still standing.

 

“Well?” Dean said sharply, holding his arm out towards the man’s retreating back.

 

“I think he wants us to follow him,” Cas said, taking a step in Matsu Kami’s direction. Sam and Dean looked at each other, Sam with curiosity and Dean with irritation, both unsure of how to precede.

 

Cas didn’t wait for them, and they quickly moved to catch up, trailing behind the old man and his little red dog, the cherry trees glistening overhead, quiet and still.

 

 

* * *

 

They followed him down the river walk until, abruptly, he turned onto a side path, a meandering dirt trail snaking its way through weedy grass and tall oak trees sagging with Spanish moss. It was obvious he was walking into the square little house butted right up against the Mississippi tributary's shallow brown water, stepping up onto the porch, the dog leaping onto the landing and careening inside through the open door. Matsu Kami, who had replaced his hat during his walk, took it off of his head and bowed into the doorway, slipping off his sandals before stepping fully inside.

 

Twenty steps behind him, Dean and Sam and Cas cautiously zigzagged through the briars, feet adjusting to the packed dirt and gentle roll of the land towards the riverbank. As they came closer they could see a dock jutting off the back of the house, a little boat bobbing on the current, moored loosely to an end post, oars tucked inside its white belly. The house stood on its wood frame with its open door yawning at them in the afternoon daze, inviting them in to the cool interior, dark with shadows and pulled shades to keep the heat out.

 

The smell of the river was strong and Dean’s stomach gave a nauseous twist.

 

“Is this the teahouse?”

 

“It’s gotta be,” Sam mumbled, watching Cas move ahead, climbing the two solid steps to the porch that hung precariously on its stilts above the soft stream current. He stood for a moment, peering into the dark entrance.

 

“I don’t want to go in uninvited,” he said as Dean and Sam approached. They stood, the raised floor giving a whine under their feet as they shifted.

 

“Well, I’m not walking all the way back to the car,” Dean said after a moment, reaching down to start untying his boots. He knelt, rolling his jeans up and undoing the knots.

 

Sam and Cas stooped to do the same, heads bent to their task. Three pairs of scuffed shoes lined the outside wall of the porch, next to the brown leather sandals in a neat row.

 

It was such a square house; the lines seemed to be straighter, the angles perfected, a contrast to the wild growth around it, to the witchy, twiggy plants that scraped along the underside and lined the path and the sad trees with their mossy hair.

 

Dean glanced around, looking at the strange white piece of paper sealed to one of the beams, and at a few more hanging limply from the rafter with large characters drawn on them.

 

They stood, rumpled and sweating slightly, gnats ghosting over their ears and eyelashes, on the clean swept porch, hovering in front of the door. No dog came to investigate. No sound came from within it. Even though they had seen the man go in, the house appeared empty.

 

“Maybe we should knock?” Sam offered, and Cas raised his fist, rapping on the door-frame

 

A light scuff echoed back immediately, and there was a huff of exertion and then light skipping footfalls just as cicadas began to rattle in the oaks, filling the small clearing up with their drone. The noise inside was clumsy and random, as though someone had just woken up—or the house had just woken up.

 

The footfalls came closer and a girl emerged, stepping into the half light, a black strand of flyaway hair caught on her lip. She pulled the sleeve of her yellow cotton robe up over her shoulder, hastily adjusting it.

 

“We followed your grandfather here,” Cas said, assuming she was the granddaughter, looking into her pale round face and her dark winking eyes.

 

“Yes!” she replied after a moment of internal translation, bowing slightly before stepping back and to the side, making room in the doorway. “You are here to have tea! Please come in!”

 

She smiled brightly, and the three men uneasily filed past her and into the front room.

 

It was sparse and spare; a few silk wall hangings and mats that were soft under their socked feet; they could see a small hallway with rooms to one side and then the back room lined with traditional screens and the silhouette of a man smoking a long pipe, watching the river through the open back of the house. He knelt comfortably at a low table, feet tucked under him, his loose pants and tunic shirt shifting as he did, pulling on his pipe and stretching idly. A small tea pot sat on the middle of the table, steam wafting from it, hovering and mingling with the smoke from his pipe in a violet cloud slowly pulling out of the house and into the open air.

 

The young girl bustled in front of them and pushed the screen open more, revealing more of the back room. Plum-colored cushions lined the table and she smiled, beckoning them in.

 

“Oji-san,” she tutted, rounding on Matsu Kami. “This is no good.” She plucked the pipe from the old man’s fingers and went to dump the ashes off of the back dock. Her grandfather grumbled while the men came in, staring awkwardly around and hesitantly folding themselves up beside the table.

 

His silver hair was pressed flat against his head, but it was thick and shone with health. He rubbed his now empty fingers and the little girl came back, tucking the pipe into the pocket of his shirt. He shook his head but smiled at her fondly.

 

Sam wondered if the dog was sleeping in one of the back bedrooms, away from the hot sun.

 

“Momoko-chan, could you please fetch cups,” he said after a moment in his earthy voice, and the little girl nodded, moving off to do as she was told, the wide sleeves of her robe fluttering as she sprung off into the house again.

 

The old man looked at his three guests with slight interest, still rubbing his fingers together, his other arm resting on the table casually. He let his beetle black eyes shift to Cas, eyebrows rising. He said nothing.

 

“Why did you walk off like that?” Dean snapped, the silence shattering. “We were trying to talk to you.”

 

The old man smiled wryly, unaffected by Dean’s tone.

 

“Take it out on me as much as you wish,” he said. “I am old. I do not mind.”

 

Dean scowled. “How about you just answer the damn question?”

 

Matsu Kami chuckled and sighed, adjusting himself slightly on his pillow.

 

“It doesn’t matter.” He waved his hand through the air, dismissing Dean’s comment. “You followed me. You are here now, and we are going to have tea as friends would. It is done.”

 

Dean opened his mouth to say something, but the girl came through the room before he could, holding a tray of cups. She placed them down on the table, kneeling at her grandfather’s side, lifting the kettle from its place in the center and delicately tipping tea into it with practiced hands. She slid the tea in front of them and then retreated back, closing the screen behind her. They stared into their cups, watching the steam waft up into their faces, its sticky-sweet smell perfuming the air, a leaf or two drifting at the top.

 

They looked back to the man. He had not taken a drink yet, but watched them, recognizing their hesitance. He touched the rim of his cup with the pads of his thin fingers.

 

“It will not hurt you,” he said gently. “It will only help.”

 

He lifted the cup to his lips and took a small sip, eyes closing. He smiled and replaced it on the table, motioning for them to do the same.

 

Sam took the cup in his hands, looking at Cas and his brother. Dean was staring at his as if it were going to leap up and swallow him instead of the other way around, and Cas was examining the ceramic. Sam took a breath and drank.

 

He didn’t feel anything at first; it was as sweet as it smelled, and flowery. It slid down his throat and into his stomach, pooling in a comfortable heat in his chest. Seconds passed. He sneezed, out of nowhere, and then, as if a flip had been switched, he felt something tingle in the tips of his fingers. Sudden excitement. Excitement or happiness, or something like that – something pleasantly bubbling under his skin, making him feel awake and alert.

 

He looked up at the old man and grinned, the emotion seeping into him more fully, curling around in him. It opened his lungs up and quickened his pulse and the heavy weight of the hot day shook itself off his shoulders.

 

The old man returned his look and smiled.

 

“It gives you what you need,” he said. “That is the secret.”

 

There was a clatter and Sam snapped his head to the sound, to the other end of the table.

 

Cas had both of his hands on Dean’s arm, and the invigoration in Sam changed in an instant to urgent concern. Dean was bent forward, fingers covering his mouth, eyes wide; his empty cup was rolling on its side across the table. It suddenly seemed as if a shadow had fallen on the little house by the river.

 

Dean shook his head rapidly side to side, palm lifting off of his mouth so he could gasp. His other hand curled into a fist and he slammed it on the table, gasping again and again, as if someone had sucked him into a vacuum and stolen all his air. His body wracked with tremors. He was hyperventilating, nearly, and Sam felt a cold chill take hold of his arms, that sudden eternal instinct to _panic, something's wrong with Dean._ Dean clamped his hand back over his mouth and clawed at the material of his shirt for a moment, over his chest, eyes squeezing shut.

 

“What did you do to him!?” Sam shouted, his pulse beating wildly in his ears, his whole body on pins and needles.

 

Cas stared at Dean, eyes wide and frightened, unmoving, fingers clenched over his arm.

 

“It is as I thought,” the old man said, watching Dean with pitying eyes. “It is much worse.”

 

“What? What is?” Cas demanded, never looking from Dean’s face as he shook and heaved for air and made choked-off sounds of distress.

 

“Don’t fight,” Matsu Kami said calmly, addressing Dean and Dean only. “If you fight it will only fight harder.”

 

“You said it wouldn’t hurt!” Sam cried. “What did you do? Tell me!”

 

Dean’s mouth wrenched open and a sound broke out of him, erupting from some deep place. A hoarse sound, like a broken cry of pain—tears began to pour from of his eyes and slip down his face in torrents, falling over his chin and into the creases of his nose and down his neck.

 

Sam didn’t move, was too frozen to move, watching his brother sob and clutch his own chest, watching his shoulders jerk and twitch as he wept. The old man watched as well.

 

“You have let this happen for too long,” he said, over the sound of Dean’s cries. “Too long you have let this sit heavy in you. It is time to let go.”

 

Dean shook his head; he opened his mouth but no sound came out.

 

“It is time to let it _go_ ,” the man said with an authority. “You must do this or you will remain as you are. You will not find peace, no matter how hard you look for it.”

 

“What are you _talking_ about? You don’t – know me!” Dean shouted, his tear streaked face glaring before it crumpled into pieces again, washed in tears and agony. He folded his hands over his face, palms pressed hard over his eyes. Cas’ hands had pulled back from him and hung against his arm, unsure of where to go, unsure of what comfort he could offer.

 

“This heavy heart will be your end,” Matsu Kami said firmly. “It will drown you.”

 

All at once a violent energy waved through Dean and he made one final, strangled sound, and then, on his next inhale, he quieted.

 

He whimpered, looking scared, looking shocked. The old man nodded.

 

“Too long you have felt such a weight,” he said quietly. There was a dull scraping sound and the red dog came tripping into the room. It whined and shot under the table, straight into Dean’s lap where it leapt against his knees, wiggling and whining and licking his chin, catching the tears, bathing his face.

 

Dean buried his hands in its fur and let out a ragged breath, his whole body collapsing in on itself, eyes still shut tightly.

 

Sam wiped a tear from his own face.

 

“What are you?” Cas demanded, watching Dean hunch against the dog’s body. It yelped and nuzzled his cheek, wriggling in his hold, twisting and turning and frantically trying to comfort him. “You’re not a man.”

 

“And which are you this time?” the old man said slowly back, taking another sip of his tea. “The girl or the magpie?”

 

Cas shook his head, his hands shaking. He longed to let them rest on Dean. He longed to pull him into his arms – but he didn’t know how. He didn’t know how to do that. He still wasn't sure exactly what he'd just witnessed. He waited instead, waited for Dean to make some sign, to come to him, but Dean was consumed with whatever he was feeling at the moment, clutching the little red dog instead.

 

“I have many names,” the old man said, sighing. “Kami-sama. Matsu Kami. I came here with my trees; far over the sea, far from my land, far from my familiars. Only sweet Momo-chin could come with me, for she was clever and acted as my dog.

 

“I lived in bitterness for many years, angered that they would pull me from my sacred ground. I saw the children die for many years and did not do anything about it. The river here does not listen the way my rivers used to – its spirit is too wild. It thrashes and writhes, it does not want to be netted. But I have been patient and it has finally settled. It has stopped fighting me. It has let the little ones walk beside it again.”

 

Dean lifted his head and stared not at the old man but at Cas, swollen eyes cracked. Wordlessly his arms reached out and he buried his face in Cas’ chest, shameless, fingers clutching at his back. Cas folded him into his embrace, pushing his face into Dean’s hair.

 

“It has finally settled,” Kami-sama said softly, loading his pipe. The little dog hopped from Dean's lap and, with seamless ease, turned back into a girl, and her master reached out and caught her smooth white hand, squeezing it.

 

Sam shifted towards them, long arms wrapping around both of them at once, some kind of knot in the center of the quiet little room.

 

 

* * *

 

“You're a god,” Sam said, a little while later.

 

One of the screen doors was open, and the dock stretched out in front of him, out over the deepening evening water. The girl who had been a dog had gone out and set a lantern on its end alight; now Dean and Castiel were out there, out of earshot, sitting on the end of the dock with their feet over the water. Sam could see the bow of Dean's shoulders, the taut attentive line of Castiel's back.

 

He and the old man sat inside, still, at the table. A strange sort of peace had fallen in the wake of the confusion, the seizure of sadness that had blown in and out through Dean's body.

 

Matsu Kami nodded. “Of a kind.”

 

“What was that?” Sam said, firmly but softly. “What was it exactly? What happened?”

 

“My tea is a very special tea,” the old man said. The cups had been cleared away; the table was empty between them. “It gives you what you need.”

 

“What did it to do my brother?”

 

“Just so,” Matsu Kami said, gesturing fluidly with his old and powerful hands. “It has been a long time waiting, the weight in his heart. It gave him what he needed. He let it all go.”

 

The old god sighed, shifting on the cushion on the floor. He looked out at Dean and at Cas on the edge of the dock, their bodies tipping towards each other.

 

“Of course as soon as I saw your faces, I knew you,” he said. “You had come about the little ones, about the miracle of my trees. A little late.” He clicked his tongue, fondly. “The river has already made up its mind, that it will be this year. It has already pulled away from Galilee and given up the children. The whole world is waking up. And now he has given up his heaviness, his sadness and his grief, all the lead in his heart. He can swim again. And look.” He gestured out to Dean, to the dark space between his body and the angel's, smaller every minute. “He is coming into the light.”

 

Matsu Kami nodded, to himself.

 

“I don't understand,” Sam said.

 

“It is nearly time,” the old god said. “That is what the river says.”

 

They sat a moment longer in silence, and then Matsu Kami tapped his knuckles on the table, a few times. Sam glanced at him.

 

“I'm afraid your little book of miracles won't take you much further,” the old man said. “The land in the south is not good for miracles.”

 

“Where are we supposed to go next, then?”

 

“There is a place in Missouri, but I cannot tell you where it is. It lies on the river. You will have to find it for yourself.” The old god touched a hand to his lips, gazing out at Dean and Castiel on the dock, over the dark water. “If the river tells me the truth, the story has been waiting there for a very long time.”

 

Sam scoffed, gently. “How are we supposed to find a place in Missouri that you won't tell us about? Just drive and hope we hit it?”

 

“Hope will have nothing to do with it,” Matsu Kami said, smiling. “ _You_ would be hard pressed to miss it, dust as you are.”

 

Sam stared at him a moment, confused—but he was learning not to ask for specifics, with these people. It never yielded anything.

 

“Everything will be well,” said Matsu Kami, with definitive authority, as if he were sure of nothing more in the world. “Everything will be well in the end.”

 

 

* * *

 

Over the tributary shallows the cicadas were buzzing in cacophonous chorus, rattling in the trees that hung over the water. Cas sat beside Dean on the warm weathered wood, in the humid night air, watching him carefully out of the corner of his eye.

 

Dean had been in a daze since the shock of it. Cas could see in the lines of his face that he hadn't been expecting it, and that he was still unsure of what had happened. There were dry tear-tracks on his face, and he kept rubbing at his knees, sliding his palm over the denim of his jeans, worrying the fabric.

 

What Cas wasn't sure of was if he was alright. He didn't want to ask—that felt like an intrusion. The hot air was stuffed behind his eyes like cotton. He could hardly remember what they were doing there, in that house, or what, if anything, they'd been told.

 

Next to him, Dean breathed, and very abruptly he bent, resting his head in his hands, elbows on his knees, inhaling and exhaling in the space between his wrists. Cas fought the urge to touch his back, instead let his hand inch closer to Dean on the dock wood that separated them.

 

“Dean,” he said, gently, and Dean sucked in one more breath and then sat up, craning his head up to look at the stars that were coming out in force overhead.

 

“I'm okay,” Dean replied. “If you were gonna ask.”

 

“You're sure.”

 

“Yeah.” Dean sighed, and then looked at him. There was something smoother to his face, now, Cas thought. A little less stress in the skin at his eyes, a little less weight on the corners of his mouth. “I'm fine. I promise.”

 

Cas nodded. He looked down into the shallow water underneath them, swaying and shivering under the dock lantern light. He wondered if there were fish in that mud, minnows or skating water beetles. Or catfish.

 

“He's a god,” Cas said, trying to make conversation. _Back on topic, back on the road,_ that was what he knew Dean liked after a shock. “A very old one. I suppose it was something in the tea, some kind of magic—”

 

“I want to kiss you,” Dean said abruptly, interrupting him, and Cas fell silent. He paused, met Dean's eyes, and there was nothing but sincerity in their green, nothing but affection in his expression.

 

“Nothing's stopping you,” Cas said, softly.

 

“No, I mean—God, I want to kiss you,” Dean said, breath slipping out under his words, making them thin, making them rise like tide. “I want to kiss every bit of you. I mean it.”

 

“Dean—”

 

“Would you let me do that?” Dean's hand covered Cas' on the dock, his broad fingers slipping between thin bones. “When we get back to the motel, Cas, can we do that? I'll get another room, Sam won't care, he knows. I'll make it good—we'll take it nice and slow and easy, like dancing in Galilee—God, I just—”

 

“Yes,” Cas said, a flutter in his throat, feeling something warm and galactic taking up residence in the small of his back. He swallowed, nodding, entranced by the wideness of Dean's eyes, the tremor in his voice. It had been a long time since he'd heard nerves in Dean Winchester's speech. But he didn't seem _too_ nervous—only eager, eager to prove something, he thought. “Yes.”

 

“You sure?”

 

“I'm positive.”

 

Dean's hand squeezed his, tight, and Dean sighed as if yet another weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

 

 

* * *

 

It wasn't like dancing in Galilee.

 

It was an avalanche, a blur—the hot tight stomach-knots, the heartbeats of the minutes before, the glances in the rear-view window as they drove away from the grove in the lengthening dusk. Cas in the back seat knowing—imagining, with anticipation and subdued excitement—that soon they would be in the motel parking lot, soon there would be a credit card and a flashed smile and a new room. Sam in the front who had felt the change in the air and knew and didn't say a word when the room next door was booked and they were parting ways, smiled at Dean a little as if to say _about time_ or something else, something snide or amused.

 

Yes, an avalanche. That was the word for it. They were shy until the door opened, eyes lowered and feet scuffling, gazes darting, smiles trading. Lights on, fuzzing, flickering, fluorescent. The number 16 in faux brass on the wood of the door. The metal buffer of where the concrete met the carpet, the gentle snick of the outside world sealing off, and Dean's hand on his waist.

 

Something shifted. Made them animals.

 

A kiss, first. Surprisingly hard, Cas thought, when they stumbled back against the door and he felt the peephole connect with the back of his head, and Dean's mouth wide and open against his, breathing, exchange of breath, and Cas tilted his skull the better to fit, felt his heart begin to race almost prematurely. Took Dean's face in his hands and kissed him deep. Spiking flare of adrenaline (arousal?) in his stomach—he wasn't accustomed to it, to the sudden hunger and need that was coursing through his vessel, shoulder-blades finding the grooves in the door, slotting in. Dean slotting in between his legs, thigh a firm pressure there, his hands beneath Castiel's shirt, touching, feeling, exploring. This was not a guest room in Illinois. This was not lantern-light and cotton sheets.

 

Dean's fingers were cold but not unpleasant, circling him, palming at his sides and coming to rest against his back, the sharp lines of his pelvis, the bony protrusion of his spine. Dean kissed him and kissed him until Cas pulled back for oxygen, gasping, _starving_ , almost afraid, he found, to be disconnected for too long, dove back for another, the taste of Dean's mouth, the heavy wet taste of river air in his mouth when Cas licked inside, reciprocation, Dean tasting him, too. Dean's hands fumbling on his body, blunt fingernails leaving soft lines as if asking to be invited inside.

 

Cas whispered “yes” against Dean's slack flush lips although he didn't know what he was agreeing to—no question had been asked, no proposition offered, they were pulling from the door and whirlwinding against the soft jut of the mattress, only one bed, here; a single and the woman at the counter had raised her eyebrows but that was nothing. Nothing.

 

Cas stumbled back, pulled Dean down—or was pushed? And fallen upon—they were careening, mountainside catastrophe, Castiel's hands still holding Dean's face until he felt the tug of his T-shirt under his arms and came apart, lifted his hands away so that Dean could wrestle it off of him, leave his chest bare and pale and quick with breath under the obnoxious light. A pause of only the smallest naked instant and Dean looked down at him, dim-headed, trailed one hand down the path of Castiel's sternum, brushed against the pink buds of his nipples and then down again, catapulting, seizing his mouth hard. Cas arched, back coming up from the mattress, able only to whimper into Dean's mouth, frustrated that Dean's body was so high above him, he needed, he needed something to press into, the new and throbbing heat between his legs, straining against his jeans, terrifying and exhilarating all at once. He wrapped bare arms around Dean's neck and pulled him down, teeth and tongues crashing, competing, Dean's grip on his shoulders so tight and sharp that he felt the dig of nails into his skin, couldn't care.

 

Bent his knees, arched again, pulled back and slid his hands beneath Dean's shirt, rode it up and over and Dean stripped it from his own body, nearly tore it in his haste. It landed absently on the floor in the periphery of Cas' attention and they pushed up the bed, rouching the comforter under their bodies, Cas' knees knocking against Dean's hips, wanting, needing, desperately hungry with it. Something must have broken at the threshold of the room, something must have ripped the humanity out of them, animals, avalanche. This was not kissing to keep the kingfishers quiet.

 

Dean leaned back on his knees, moved to straddle Cas' hips, fingers stumbling over the buttons of the angel's fly, and Cas lifted himself up on his elbows, impatient, watching, gnawing at his kiss-flushed lower lip, dizzy. And they were rocking, Cas lifting up his hips and Dean pulling down his jeans, his boxers, without ceremony, without care, leaving them bunched against Cas' knees—Cas had never seen himself so hard before, cock against his stomach, but he didn't have time to look because Dean's mouth was on his again and all he could do was reach up to cling to him, kiss him savagely back, dig his nails into Dean's flesh to overcome the imminent feeling that he was about to be destroyed—

 

Dean rutted against him, gasping, and Cas could see that he was blind with it, eyes wide with arousal and need, and Cas crawled a little out from under him, bent forward to help him slip out of his clothes, was suddenly overtaken with the desire to see him, all of him, naked and necessary—together they breathed and stumblekissed and pulled themselves free, bare, then, and riotous, bodies seeking each other like magnets, like colliding universes.

 

“Fuck,” Dean said, a low growl, and Cas could feel the hard press of him against his stomach, and Dean reached between them and took them both together in his hand and Cas moaned, unabashedly, unashamedly, hot stabs of _good-yes-God_ forking through his spine, the clumsy stroke of Dean's hand, the heated flush of their cocks together, he bucked and panted and when Dean kissed him again and moved his wrist in that twist that _fuck_ was like lightning through him and Cas bit down on Dean's lip, felt the flesh give and blood slip like a slit in a cherry, hot red scarlet salt in their mouths and Dean made a noise of pain but only sucked harder on the angel's mouth and sucked his own blood from him and the salt of their lips, the salt of their bodies, the motion of his hand, the angry push of their hips and Cas gasped or whimpered or shouted “ _fuck me_ ” and couldn't even pause to wonder at how he'd never said those words in his life before Dean was fair biting at the corner of his mouth hissing “I know, I will, God, babe—” and the stroke of him the weight of him the desperation of him pulling Cas over some high unattainable stratosphere—

 

Dean was clambering off of him and Cas was too lust-blown to see what he was doing, too frustrated at the loss of his hand and his cock and his body to care, and then Dean was there again, something in his hand, couldn't see, didn't care. Dean rocketed back into his mouth and they weren't kissing anymore—they were biting, tasting, almost devouring, Dean's lip still bleeding against Cas' teeth, and then something cool and slick there on Dean's hand, stroking over them both again, and then Dean was reaching further between them and Cas felt his fingers in the dark close place between his legs pushing and pressing and slipping in and he cried out, dragged his fingernails down Dean's chest in wanton reaction, leaving long lines of stark red against his skin, Dean's fingers inside him, _Dean inside him,_ pulling him open, a haze of silver sparks in his head and nothing except the rat-a-tat-tat of his heart in his chest, the tattoo of _fuck me fuck me fuck me tear me open climb inside me—_

 

The twist, the pull, three fingers, four, and then Dean took hold of his hips and pushed them up, Cas' knees beneath his arms, and then he was inside, throbbing inside, and Cas let out a hoarse sound that might have been a sob or a scream at the pain of it, the sickening pleasure of it, rocked down, was rocked into, kiss, savage, Cas buried his face in Dean's shoulder and bit down hard on the muscle there, their bodies bent together like some mismatched ouroborous eating each other alive, the entire world dissolving into Dean's fingers on his cock and his body, pulling long claw-scratches down his body, bite marks on his chest, and Cas pulling blood he knew from Dean's back in arcing curves of torn skin, unable to anchor himself and falling and bucking and pushing and needing and screaming with it, this was not dancing, ungentle and untender and unlovely, Dean's thumb coursed over the head of Cas' cock and Cas buckled, their movements desperate and arrhythmic, pulsing and pumping in and out and _in_ and out solely to break each other apart, solely to tear each other down, it seemed, no sweet propositions on the dock, no hollow chests to be filled up with softness, cold and hard and painful, avalanches. Bodies stuck red with raised blood and sweltering bruises.

 

Dean fucked him nearly senseless, driving him into the mattress, and they came almost together with hoarse sounds and trembling legs and went boneless, breath burning in their throats.

 

Dean came down on top of him, his entire body exhausted, and Cas lay beneath his weight, eyes closed, trying to regain his air and his sense of place, the muscles in his thighs fluttering, a hard ache starting in the small of his back, a harder one still beginning to knot in his stomach. He didn't for the life of him know why.

 

Cas turned his head away, and felt Dean kiss his jaw, but there was nothing in it—it was flat and it was sad and it was passionless, and then Dean lifted himself off Castiel's body and abruptly pulled away, sat on the edge of the bed and held his head in his hands.

 

There was no golden high, Cas realized, lying there on his back, his come drying against his stomach. He felt, at once, as if he were going to vomit.

 

Pain was sparking in the bites and the bruises and the scratches.

 

He felt horrible.

 

Something hot—a tear—slipped from the corner of his eye and drifted back into his hairline, against his skull.

 

He didn't move. Dean didn't move.

 

It was supposed to have been _good,_ Cas thought, looking dazedly up at the stucco ceiling. Wasn't it? There was supposed to have been passion, affection, tenderness, _love_. It was supposed to have felt like coming home to Dean, worshiping him, adoring him. Not ripping him open. Not tearing him apart, not letting himself be torn apart.

 

It hadn't felt like coming home at all. It hadn't felt like anything. It had been empty and sad and violent and wrong.

 

Out of the corner of his eye he saw blood welling to the surface of a welt on Dean's back, and without knowing what he was doing he reached out, touched it, smeared it away. Dean flinched, and did not turn his head.

 

“I'm sorry,” Castiel said, in a choked-off whisper.

 

He thought of the weight Dean had shed, in Matsu Kami's house on the river, the sadness he'd sobbed out over the table.

 

It was back again in the bend of his shoulders and the bow of his spine.

 

Castiel covered his face with his hands.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It had been like hands. Hands climbing down his throat, hands searching and prodding at his insides, at the gory parts of him; hands with insistent fingers, digging around, searching for something. The old man’s voice had entered his head like something out of a dream, parting through his thoughts, through the curtain of pain searing through him, cleaving his mind in half.

 

He’d resisted, he’d tried to shove the voice out, cough the hands up, to shrink back, to pull back, but they were determined. He’d thrown everything against the intruder, but then the hands had found what they were looking for. They’d pried it out of him, yanking upward by the root, and it had been agony, because whatever it was wrestled in him, it thrashed and kicked, and gasped, and fought.

 

Every white hot scream of Hell playing back in his ear, and he’d been afraid.

 

Afraid to let go – because what would be left behind? The shuddering blue-black would be gone and what would he have to hold on to? Was there even anything underneath at all?

 

 _I will have nothing to give! Nothing! Nothing to offer—_ had he said that? Or the old man or something else entirely; had he imagined it in their grip, spouting nonsense, trying to assert himself over the foreign presence inside? He couldn’t remember. He only remembered the precious light. He only remembered what it was like to breathe and have every inch of your lungs expand, to have room in his chest and everything had been crisp and edged in neatly, everything had been straight lines, everything had been where it should have been, and Cas’ chest, and Cas’ arms around him and he was okay.

 

He was better than okay. He'd felt amazing. Young for the first time in twenty years.

 

There was the drag of Cas’ body on the covers, a soft-slip of sound. Dean didn’t want to turn around and see the wreckage. He didn’t want to turn and see the mess he had made of Cas, of everything.

 

But then Cas whimpered, made some heartbreaking noise, and Dean had to.

 

His mouth fell open and his brows crawled together in pain.

 

“Baby, don’t cry,” he whispered, voice crackling. Cas’ head shook slightly and Dean bent and kissed his shoulders, kissed the sharp bones and the curve of his neck, the knob of his spine. Ran his hands over Cas' side, on the tender mottled skin of his hips, the places where his hands had dug in and bitten hard, had scratched deep.

 

“I’m sorry,” Cas croaked. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Don’t be,” Dean whispered, trying to convince himself as much as he was convincing Cas. “Don’t be sorry. It was just – it was just too much.”

 

 _Too much_ was a nip that ended in a little harsh laugh. _Too much_ was a rushed apology when a nail snagged somewhere soft; _too much_ was a little plea to slow it down, please. This was far greater than _too much_. This was dangerous and bloody. A raw nerve, a wire spitting sparks, a cigarette stubbed out on skin.

 

“I hurt you,” Cas murmured, like he couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe he could have ever done a thing like that. “What I did to your back.”

 

“It’ll heal up,” Dean said dryly. “I’m tough. We’re tough.” Dean hushed him, kissing the side of his neck. “We’ll try again. We’ll just try again and it’ll be fine.”

 

He winced, a scratch pulling too tightly on his side, and eased himself down beside Cas, drawing him back into him, soft cock nestling against the small of his back. He stroked Cas’ hair and rubbed his neck.

 

Cas said nothing. He didn’t turn to look at him, but his hands found Dean’s where they curled against his stomach.

 

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, and Dean rubbed his cheek against Cas’ sweat-soft skin.

 

“Me too,” Dean said, voice low. “It’s okay.”

 

The angel finally turned around, tangling their legs together, pushing them as close as they could get.

 

“I didn’t mean to,” Dean stuttered.

 

“I know,” Cas assured him, his words thick and chipping and falling apart. Drywall crumbling, buildings falling down, slow motion video of sinkholes and waves washing cars away. As if by some trick of nature a black hole had decided to open up in the center of him. Decided to take his control away from him, wrench it from him and not give it back till he was coherent enough to survey the damage. Why did this always happen? Why did he always get stripped so bare?

 

The universe always baiting him with something; offering him Dean, The Righteous Man himself; offering him Sam, a makeshift family, a brother, a friend, a place to belong; offering him power or loyalty, a chance to prove his devotion; to be something that mattered; the opportunity to be an example of the love he so desperately wanted to show.

 

Some nebulous force standing in front of him, holding out its hands full of good intentions, the fact that he always meant well, that he was just _trying_.

 

He didn’t understand why it kept falling apart. Why he was always left lying there, unsure of where it had gone wrong exactly and confused as to how it had ended up hurting so bad.

 

Not knowing who he was.  
  


He shuddered.

 

“Baby, I’m sorry,” Dean said again, as if it were all he had left to say.

 

The room swelled with the apologies. The bedspread and the carpet, the drapes absorbed them, sucked them in, the loose syllables catching in the threads, sinking down into the fabric, muffled.

 

“I’m so sorry.”

 

Dean touched the bruises on Cas’ hips. Kissed his chest, attempted to soothe the hurt places.

 

He stared at his fingers, the way they fit up against the bluish splotches, lined up so perfectly, so neatly. He didn’t want them, suddenly. He didn't want these hands.

 

Cas must have seen it on his face. He hushed him, taking his palms and lifting them to his mouth, lips skimming over his knuckles, pressing his face against the calloused skin.

 

“You have such perfect hands,” he said.

 

He had such good hands; such strong hands.

 

And oh – Dean’s thumb skimmed apologetically over his hurt lips.

 

“You have such wonderful hands…”

 

It came out as such a strange sound, caught between a whisper and a sob and something worse than that, if such a thing existed. Something worse. Something quiet.

 

Something sad and far away, like the song of a mourning dove.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was a dark morning; somewhere in the night a storm had drifted in over Le Beau and was drenching any attempt at a sunrise. Cas woke to the patter of rain on the motel roof and the deep blue light shifting wetly under the drapes on the window.

 

Dean was still asleep, his body tucked behind Castiel's, their knees fitted together like nesting dolls. The hunter's hands rested gently against his stomach and his breath was soft and whispering against Cas' nape.

 

Quietly, he shifted, rubbing sleep from one eye, and sat up, wincing. Everything hurt, and the first suggestion of the pain brought tears to his eyes again, harsh pricking ones more of shame than anything else. Cas scrubbed them away, sniffed, looked down at them both in the dim storm light.

 

They were wrecks. He sighed, running a hand through his hair—Dean's shoulders were a cacophony of red streaks, a bruise weltering on his neck, a harsh blot of blood on the inside of his lower lip where, it seemed, Cas had bitten straight through.

 

He looked away. He didn't want to see what they'd done to each other.

 

Wincing, feeling strange and sore between his legs, Cas got up and went into the bathroom. He stood at the sink, leaning against the porcelain, avoiding his own eyes in the mirror, looking around. Towels, he supposed.

 

He took the generic white washrags off the towel rod and turned on the tap, twisted it to warm and wet them, squeezing them out.

 

Dean woke as soon as Cas knelt back on the bed and gently put the rag against his back, smoothing away the beads of blood that still remained in the scratches and welts.

 

“Hey,” he said softly, sitting up, catching Cas' hand to still it.

 

“Let me do this, Dean,” Cas said. He didn't look at him.

 

Dean blinked, wavering between apology and uncertainty, and then let go of the angel's hand.

 

In silence under the dark roiling of the thunderstorm they cleaned each other, twisting out the blood from the washrags under the warm sink tap, soothing the bite marks and bruises as best they could. They winced and shifted, blinking hazily with half-sleep and flick-eyed pleas for forgiveness, and when they were done—or as done as it was possible to be—Cas touched Dean's face and stroked it, gently, thumbing over his cheekbone, trying not to look at the scab forming on his lip.

 

“We can try again,” he said, repeating Dean's words from the night before. “We have time.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Hesitantly Cas leaned forward, let his head rest against Dean's shoulder, and Dean settled a hand on his naked waist, and they knelt together on the bed, eyes closed, saying nothing, rocking a little bit under the noise of the rain.

 

 

* * *

 

Sam wasn't exactly sure what decorum was, now that his brother was being openly romantic with an angel. Not that it changed anything, but it made getting on the road a bit more touch-and-go, he thought, surveying the empty double room, his packed-up duffel bag waiting on the dinette.

 

For example, who knocked on who's door.

 

In the end he settled on waiting for them, and didn't have long to wait before there was a knock on the door and he opened it to them, avoiding the rain under the motel portico.

 

He'd expected to see the usual _I-just-got-laid_ swagger in his brother's step, or something like it from the angel, but instead he was greeted with averted eyes and what looked like a frankly miserable Dean, and an entirely miserable Castiel.

 

Sam was tempted to ask what the hell had happened, but he knew better than to open that can of worms. Dean and Cas drifted inside aimlessly with murmured “morning”s and Sam turned to see the damage, a little taken aback.

 

There was a bruise the size of a peach pit on Dean's neck, purpled and mottled, and it looked like his lower lip had been near-ripped off; Cas had circles under his eyes that boded awfully, bloodshot sclera, a bite mark welling at the corner of his mouth. They dawdled, shoulders bowed, in the middle of the room, trading shameful glances, until Dean cleared his throat and said, gruffly, “I'm gonna go get coffee. And then I say we blow this place.”

 

“Yeah,” Sam said, trying to work through what he was seeing, trying to ascertain if it was appropriate to ask if they were _okay._ If they needed a first-aid kit, for Christ's sake. “Yeah, no, that's fine, um—I was looking through the binder—”

 

“I don't care where we go, let's just go,” Dean said, snappish, and Sam fell quiet.

 

“Sure,” he said after a moment of silence. “Sure, yeah. Um. D'you—want me to drive? When you get back.”

 

Dean nodded. Cas' gaze flickered between Sam and Dean and then fell back to the floor. Sam was overtaken by the urge to just _hug_ them. They looked more like kicked puppies than grown men.

 

Dean left, then, ducking out into the pouring rain, without a word; the door fell shut, sealing out the sound of the rain, and left Sam and Cas alone.

 

Sam lingered there, by the door; Cas swayed a little on his feet, eyes still fixed to the floor, as if he were trying to puzzle out some great secret about it.

 

“Are you okay?” Sam asked, softly.

 

Cas blinked, slow, and lifted his eyes to the corner of the door. Gingerly he sat down on the edge of the bed and bowed his shoulders. He shook his head, and something seemed to catch in his chest.

 

Sam bit his lip. Shit. Something must have gone seriously wrong.

 

Hesitantly he crossed the room, sat down next to Cas on the foot of the bed, unsure of what to do.

 

“Did something happen?” Sam asked gently, settling for touching Cas' shoulder. “I mean, you don't have to tell me, but—I know, about you and Dean. And it's okay, I mean, it's fine. So you can tell me if you want.”

 

“I don't know what happened,” Cas said, breathing thinly. He sounded exhausted and confused. His eyes rolled up to the ceiling and his shoulders relaxed as if in defeat. Sam felt a twinge of pain in his stomach. “We—it was awful.”

 

“Looks—like you beat each other up pretty bad,” Sam said sheepishly.

 

Cas nodded, dropping his head again, ashamed.

 

“It's not supposed to happen like that,” he said, in a rush of air, settling his head into his hands. “It's supposed to feel good, isn't it? I don't know what went wrong.”

 

“Well—” Sam hesitated, letting his hand slip a little further around the angel's shoulders, an awkward motion of comfort. “I mean, I'm no expert, but—it was the first time, right? For you, at least, I think.” He couldn't believe this conversation was happening. But seeing Cas in this much distress was twisting something in his stomach. “It's never perfect the first time. You guys'll figure it out.”

 

“I love him,” Cas blurted, then, almost frantic, the words stumbling out over his tongue before he could stop them. His face sank deeper into his hands, his spine bowed further forward, as if he were curling into himself, trying to vanish.

 

Sam's hand stilled on his back.

 

“I just want him to be happy. I thought it would make him happy.”

 

Sam paused, biting his lip, and then he let his hand rest between Cas' shoulder-blades, a gentle support, his big hand on the angel's slim, bony back.

 

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

 

 

* * *

 

By the time Dean came back with coffee, steaming in the cool sunrise rain, Cas had dried his eyes and brightened considerably, and Sam's general demeanor had shifted from shocked to sympathetic. Walking into the room the second time was much more comforting than it had been earlier that morning.

 

He tossed Sam the keys to the Impala and the three of them folded into the car, the engine purring under Sam's body. He muttered, briefly, an explanation of what Matsu Kami had said—Missouri, vague as it was—and then pulled out of the motel parking lot, windshield wipers skidding across the glass.

 

Cas leaned forward in the back seat, pressing his cheek against Dean's headrest, and when Sam glanced over in the rear-view mirror he saw the angel's hand on his brother's shoulder, and Dean's fingers gently placed over them, rubbing a little circle on the back of Cas' knuckles.

 

 _Everything will be well,_ he thought, a reassurance to himself.

 

They found the highway in the pouring rain—south, along the river, to Missouri, and wherever the old god had claimed they'd wind up next.


	6. Elsbrook, MO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Let your love grow tall.”

The storm clouds stretched all the way to the river crossing: a pinprick of a town that they forgot the name of as soon as they’d left it. Dean dozed, the lull of the highway pulling him under, and Cas stared vacantly out the window at the grey fields and cars going past, sometimes chatting with Sam when the notion struck them to speak.

 

The sun speared through the windshield as they crossed the state line, the change complete and immediate. The light glared into Sam’s eyes as he drove and had Dean stirring in his sleep, the warmth on his face sudden and intense. The dismal green miles gave way, and the bruise-yellow veil of rain and trapped light parted.

 

Wild blue expanded far past the corners of the car, stretching on, and stratus clouds spread out in the highest reaches of the atmosphere, pulled cotton edges floating up and up and up. A flock of starlings shuddered up from the prairie, black mobbed body skimming the sky like a loosed scarf on the wind. The black of the starlings and the car, the not-black of the clouds, the very not-black of the golden grass and the waving flowers thrown among it, all of it bright, all of it tremendously bright and stretching out in a kind of forever.

 

Dean jostled awake and looked out the window at the day lilies nodding in thick clumps by the ditched roadside; orange and yellow and rusted reds and weedy green and the grass which was none of these colors, which was brownish, or goldish, depending on the light or the shadow of the car passing over it.

 

They looked out at Missouri, and Missouri held no hurting colors.

 

* * *

 

“You’re kidding,” Sam breathed, looking at the traffic officer. He'd slowed the Impala to a crawl, watching the stream of backed-up traffic slowly work its way around the construction blocking most of 79.

 

“Are they tearing it up?” Dean asked, trying to see around an eighteen-wheeler attempting to merge. His younger brother nodded, making an exasperated sound. He could hear the distant whirr and clank of back hoes and rubbed his damp forehead, creeping along with the cars ahead and in front of him.

 

Men in neon vests were ushering vehicles along, spitting on the concrete and waving people down to a detour – a small crossroads, one parallel to the river and the other heading a ways inland into forest and trees. To the west, just over the overpass, there was a steep upward incline. They were looking at the back of a ridge, a drop off of the hills surrounding it, butted up to the Mississippi outflow.

 

“How far does this go?” Sam yelled out the window at the guy holding a stop sign. The man shrugged.

 

“A while! Won’t be done till Wednesday, so you’ll have to take the county roads till then or camp out in town. Just a twenty minute drive from here – just follow Hartsfield Road till you see the First Bank. Can’t miss it. If you get turned around it’ll take you straight back towards the river and dumps you in the boonies, up on the cliff.”

 

Sam thanked him, nodding and following the caterpillar of traffic as it wound its way down the exit ramp. The green government signs up ahead at a small intersection showed an arrow pointing east, towards a place called Elsbrook.

 

“Well, which way?” Sam said.

 

“If we keep going we’ll just be in stop-and-go till we can get back on 79,” Dean sighed, looking at the endless lines of now displaced cars. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to go thirty-five for four hours.”

 

Sam worried at the inside of his cheek. The old land god had said that they would find where they were supposed to go. That they’d end up there somehow. Maybe this was a sign.

 

“Okay, we’ll see if they’ve got any places to stay, and if not we’ll just keep going?”

 

“Sounds fine to me,” Dean drawled, adjusting his sunglasses and settling back down into his chair. He looked over his shoulder, into the backseat, at the angel who hadn’t said anything in some time.

 

“You okay?” he asked, and Cas opened his eyes, blinking a few times to clear his thoughts away.

 

“Yes,” he said gently, smiling. “I’m fine.”

 

Dean nodded and Sam turned the wheel, pointing them towards Elsbrook.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The middle aged man at the motel counter looked at them apologetically.

 

“Sorry boys, but can’t give you anything for the next week, at least. Everything’s getting gutted. Finally got a call from the chain for an update and they’ll be here at five AM tomorrow to start pulling the carpet up and moving all the furniture out. I would have turned off the sign but we don’t get many outside visits.”

 

Dean tapped his finger on the counter impatiently, Cas hovering beside him, hands dug deep in his pockets.

 

“You’re sure this is the only place in town?” Dean said, eyes narrowing. The man nodded, eyes full of sympathy.

 

“The only one, I’m afraid. Like I said, not too many outsiders comin’ in and out of Elsbrook. We’ve got a little of this, a little of that, but most folks don’t stop on their way to St. Louis.”

 

“How far is that from here?”

 

“Good three-hour drive.”

 

“That’s six with that traffic,” Dean sighed, mostly to Cas, who nodded.

 

“Are you sure there’s nothing here already? We’ve already been driving quite a while; your leg of highway 79 is shut down until Wednesday,” Cas insisted, and the man scratched his chin, his mouth a thin line. They watched and could almost tell the exact moment when a thought struck him before he quickly tamped it down again.

 

There was a long, expectant pause. The Impala’s engine was idling in the parking lot right outside where Sam stretching his legs and listening to a voicemail from Bobby.

 

“Well,” the man began, hesitating.

 

“Anything is fine,” Dean said quickly, flashing a strained smile. “We’re pretty low maintenance.”

 

“I ain’t worried bout’ _that_ ,” the man continued. “It’s just – you all said you came down 79?”

 

“Yes sir.”

 

He nodded.

 

“Well, you saw that ridge to the west, right? Big old rise? Well, that’s about half an hour out of town, way back, towards the river, but if you go up there, I guarantee that someone will have a light on.”

 

“Like a hotel?” Cas asked, and the man shook his head, laughing softly.

 

“Not a hotel, but some real hospitable folk. At least, they should be. They don’t come down much but, they got a real queer religion up there and they fancy strangers.”

 

As soon as the words had left his mouth, Dean and Cas sought out each other’s eyes, a look passing between them.

 

“When you say queer religion, what do you mean?”

 

“Oh, it’s all backwoods talk. Stars on their palms and they don’t eat fish, or maybe it was just one kind of fish. Catfish. All I know is Old Mattie. She’s got the stars and she lives in the big house. The real big one. Can’t miss it. Can practically see it from the bottom. It’s got the fancy dome on the porch. Her husband built that for her right after she lost that first little baby, or so they say. Got the biggest garden in Missouri too, and like I said, you can see the eaves from the bottom. Once you see the flowers pouring out over the road you’ll know you’re there, but it’s a bit windy and folks get lost a lot.”

 

“So you’re saying she’ll let us stay with her, this woman?”

 

“I haven’t seen her since a few Christmases ago. Did some roof work so the snow wouldn’t cave her in – did it through the church.The Christian one. If anybody’ll have a light on, it’s her. She’s up there in that big old house by her lonesome and she always keeps the light on as far as I know. Part of that queer sort of hers. I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it if you ask.”

 

Dean and Cas exchanged another glance and Dean nodded his thanks.

 

“'Preciate it,” he said and the man smiled back in relief that he had helped them.

 

“If you have any trouble just come back and I’ll see what I can do, alright? And if you see Old Mattie you ask after her. She’s a real sweet woman. Shy as they come, but sweet.”

 

They agreed that they would and left, pushing open the glass door, the chime sounding over their heads.

 

“So?” Sam asked as they walked towards the car, Dean holding out his hands for the keys, which Sam passed along.

 

“Motel’s closed for a week. Getting redone or something, but he says if we drive up towards that ridge we saw coming in, there’s some hen who’ll give us a room or something.”

 

Sam looked at his brother, face bemused.

 

“So we’re just going to trust what some guy says and drive up into the middle of nowhere?”

 

“She’s one of _them_ ,” Dean stressed, climbing into the car. The doors slammed shut and Dean revved the engine, circling out of the parking lot.

 

“A Riverlander?” Sam clarified. He felt a little taken, even though he expected that something strange would probably occur, some odd circumstance landing them somewhere. Just not so soon, or with so little trouble.

 

He'd thought they’d have to go a little farther at least, but for some reason, it didn’t worry him—how easy it was. This town felt very different from the town before it. He wasn’t stressed; he wasn’t even worried. It was as if he'd known they’d find a place, one way or another, and everything would be fine.

 

It was odd to feel so certainly about something.  
  


“Yeah,” Dean answered finally, getting back onto the main road. “He said she’ll have a light on for us.”

 

 

* * *

 

The climb up the ridge was slow at first, a tedious serpentine twist of the road, but once they got over the train tracks, the landscape took a dramatic turn. The ground dipped behind, falling away under their wheels the higher they got, the town growing further and smaller. Their ears popped, and the air thinned. They all took deeper breaths, watching the wilderness gather them closer and closer to its heart.

 

Cas looked up, and his eyes caught the sharp peaks of a roof above the sycamores and birches, but it quickly disappeared as they drove deeper. Arrowwoods bloomed on the slopes and a wild turkey scattered into the underbrush as they drove past, disrupting the white flowers.

 

After several minutes of climbing, it evened out, the road bending and curving in the distance, winding its way through the woods. There were no houses that they could see at first – just groves of trees and the road. Musclewood and hazelnut, and the broad crowns of hickories – the green smell of wild walnut and the tall, unbending trunks of black oak hiding whatever lay behind them. They drove for who knows how long – none of them were keeping track of the time.

 

The sun had been stealthily slipping below the horizon for some time and was behind them, the sky ahead soft and smudged, the first freckled stars beginning to appear, faint and washed out by the lavender shadows the sunset was casting.

 

Foot paths curled through the trees, and soon, Cas caught sight of a drive. Tall houses, some with lights on, some without, and they passed these, and seemed to know that it wasn’t the house they were looking for.

 

“Flowers,” Cas said, pointing, and Dean slowed the car to a near stop. Flowers blurring against the edge of the road, bowing their heads sleepily in the gathering dark, lulled by the chirp of crickets and the drowsy whir of insects on the lawn. Aureate clusters of evening primrose and delicate cream indigo; untamed sprays of aster mingling with jewelweed and the trumpet creeper lacing a tree at the edge of the property, red flowers splashed against the mottled grey trunk.

 

There was a light on the front porch, its round roof spangled with thick green ivy coiled around the support beams and a few of the banisters, creeping to the stairs. The rest of the house was square; even, neat lines – flat faced with large windows and honey colored light spilling from them. The round attic window glinted with the last rays of the sun, peering down like a moon over the lawn.

 

Fireflies started to rise from the flowerbeds, shaking their sleepiness off, blinking to one another from one corner to the other.

 

Dean pulled into the loose packed drive without being prompted. They could see around the back of the house, and a long calico dress hung on the line fluttered in a warm breeze, and the flowers of the expansive garden beyond shivered.

 

Dean cut the engine and the night sounds swelled, filling the mute space the Impala had left. They sat, hypnotized.

 

“I feel like…” Castiel barely whispered, but he never finished. The sentence trailed away, caught and surrounded by the trill of toads and nighthawks. He had meant to say he felt like he had been there before, but this was clearly impossible. He was overwhelmed by nostalgia, a formerly unknown emotion to him. He had not experienced it before, but he experienced it then. A blue longing, or maybe it was August green, like Dean’s eyes.

 

The light in one of the windows flickered– someone had moved inside the house.

 

In a moment of clarity, they found themselves on the porch. None of them really remembered the slow climb out of the car or the wandering path of their feet up to the steps. It was cool under the blue shadows of the portico. Their eyes touched on the beams and the solid wood under their feet and the heavy door frame and the tendrils of ivy caressing the house.

 

The dull gold latch clicked and the door heaved open and there was a light noise as a woman pulled it back. A rectangle of gold spilled onto them from the foyer; what must have been Mattie Lawrence let her hand fall from the doorknob.

 

“Well then,” she began, and her voice was soft and light and delighted. Her gaze leveled to their faces. “I suspect you’re after more than a cup of sugar at this hour!”

 

It was Dean who spoke, eyes never leaving her own. They were sweet and gentle and affectionate, and he was suddenly transported, as if in the shift of eyes adjusting to daylight, to being a child, coming in at dusk from playing outside, clutching his Tonka truck, his mother waiting at the back door to collect him and ask him about all his adventures.

 

“We were told you could put us up for a night, ma’am.”

 

She nodded, those eyes twinkling playfully. She pushed back her sweater a little bit, hand on her hip, her blue dress faded from many washes and smelling faintly of violet water.

 

“Oh, were you now?” she tittered, voice warbling into a laugh. “Well, I suppose we can’t make a liar out of them, can we?” She canted her small body, opening up more space in the entryway for them to walk through. “Can’t hover in the door, chickadees. My Aaron always said not to hover in doors; it’ll bring in bad luck. 'Sides, these old bones will pester me silly for standing.”

 

They lingered on the doorstep a few moments later, exchanging wary looks. So much kindness and hospitality had been shown them on this job—journey—whatever it was—but there was still the hesitation, still the uncertainty.

 

She waited patiently for them to come in, looking at them in the light. Dean and Cas looked around the front room, at the dust-filmed photographs and oil paintings. Mattie stopped Sam with a hand on his arm.

 

“Would you be a sweetheart and let me lean on you?” she asked in her breezy voice. “Just to the kitchen – don’t want to have to go all the way back to the parlor for my chair.”

 

“Oh—o-of course!” Sam said, remembering himself, holding out his arm for her. She wrapped her own daintily around it, all ladylike and proper, shuffling forward with him.

 

He looked at the back of her head, the coil of her snow-white hair held with a real tortoiseshell clasp and mother-of-pearl inlays, and the pressed collar of her dress. She probably hadn’t gone a day in her life without getting dressed, without putting on the little flat shoes she wore, without dabbing the violet water behind her ears.

 

Dean and Cas found themselves caught in the foyer, Sam and Mattie having disappeared for the moment into the kitchen.

 

“That was easy,” Dean said on a rush, and Cas nodded.

 

Silent embarrassment fell in the following silence. It was the first time they had been alone since the disaster of the night before, and his wounded skin itched where his clothes rubbed against it.

 

“Dean?”

 

“I’d rather not,” Dean said quickly, cutting him off. His face clouded briefly with misery and Cas refrained from sighing, settling for a soft breath through his nose. “Let’s not talk about that.”

 

 _That_.

 

So Dean had allocated it, pressed it down into a neat little word, and shoved it all into a shoebox, something you could easily slip in a closet or under a bed.

 

Cas wanted to say that it wasn’t going to work. It couldn’t work because _that_ was far too big; _they_ were too big. They weren’t going to fit into a shoebox anymore. Hadn’t Dean noticed? They were bleeding well past the borders of whatever frame their lives had previously been assigned. He had to know – he had to know because he was nearly jumping out of his skin, pretending no one else had noticed.

 

The lid wasn’t going to stay down for much longer.

 

“She’s got food.”

 

They snapped their heads towards Sam’s voice where he'd reappeared in the doorway, and he smiled, awkward. “Food. She’s got food.”

 

Dean shook his head.

 

“Like she freakin’ knew… how do they _know_?” he mumbled, tugging on Cas’ arm as he passed, following Sam back into the kitchen.

 

 

* * *

 

Mathilda Lawrence had, in fact, known that they were coming. Or perhaps she hadn't so much _known_ as _believed_.

 

She'd woken that morning with a peculiar itch in her bones, something she hadn't felt in decades. At the very least not since the day of her wedding, she'd thought, dabbing violet water behind her ears in front of the mirror. It had come as no surprise to her, then, when the grumble of an old and much-beloved car had come churning up the ridge, and had settled to a stop outside her front door.

 

She smiled at them all as they sat uneasily down at her kitchen table—she could read the anxiety in their bodies as easily as she could read anything else; understandable, that, given who they were—but even she could feel the tic of worry in the corner of her mouth. She'd opened the door for important guests, and she was prepared for important guests, but she hadn't been prepared for the look of abject misery on their faces.

 

Mattie was a quiet hostess. She told them she'd be happy to put them up for a night or two if they had business in town; told them to eat, please, she always made enough for guests whether or not they came. Told them she did this all the time, lodged strangers in her upstairs rooms, so empty and cold now that her old hips refused the stairs.

 

Quietly, as they ate what she'd made—roast chicken and potatoes and vegetables, hearty and healthy, as she'd suspected they'd be unused to—she tallied them: the brother, the man, the angel. Her old heart leapt in her chest, looking at them. She was both overjoyed and slowly succumbing to worry—to look at them sitting at her table, enjoying her hospitality, but then to see the way the man cast glances at the angel, the way the angel furtively shifted their elbows apart across the lacy tablecloth.

 

Mattie Lawrence frowned into her napkin.

 

Something wasn't right, and she hadn't been preparing all these years, just in case, to see it all go to waste.

 

 

* * *

 

“What might your business be in Elsbrook?” she asked, later, over an emptied table.

 

Sam glanced at his brother and Cas, who were looking more and more crestfallen the longer they sat next to each other, and cleared his throat.

 

“Just stopping through,” he said, perhaps a little too cheerfully, trying to make up for the dark mood hovering over the others. “Highway's, uh. Down. Construction.”

 

Mattie nodded, her pale eyes sparkling. “Are you boys on a road-trip, then?”

 

Dean shifted uncomfortably.

 

“Something like that,” Cas said, softly, almost shyly.

 

“Well.” Mattie tapped her gnarled knuckles on the tabletop, all business. “I'm an old woman and I get to bed early these summer nights, if you don't mind.”

 

There was a choral stutter of “n-no ma'am” and “thank you for having us” and the like, from all three, and she smiled.

 

“If you boys just go on up to the second floor, there are any number of old rooms.” She gestured up toward the wooden ceiling, rosy and glowing. “I try to keep them clean for travelers. You wouldn't believe how many we have come through in the cold months. Rather a tradition here.” Mattie nodded, to herself, steepling her fingers in her lap. “They say a door is always open on the Ridge.”

 

“Is that what it's called?” Sam asked. “Just the Ridge?”

 

“River Ridge, sometimes,” she said. “On account of it's looking right over the water. The room at the top of the house, incidentally, dear—looks right across the way, to the hills on the other side. It's lovely, it's lovely.”

 

Slowly and creakily she got to her feet, dusting off the front of her dress, and with the same awkward unison they'd been dancing in all night the three hunters got up as well, clearing their throats.

 

“You boys sleep tight, now,” Mattie said, making her stiff way to the cane propped up against the wall. “And do relax. It's a long road and if you've got business that needs doing, let it wait. Get yourselves sorted, take time to breathe.”

 

Another nervous shuffle. Sam nodded, smiled faintly. Mattie ducked her head in agreement and gave them a little flutter of her hand, and hobbled off down the hallway into the dark.

 

 

* * *

 

They stood silently in the kitchen afterward, shuttling their dishes to the huge porcelain trough sink, stacking them neatly inside.

 

“I don’t mind doing them,” Sam said, looking down at the mess of china plates and glasses and heavy steel forks. He glanced at his brother and shrugged. “I mean, it would probably help her out, right?”

 

Dean knew what he was really saying; Sam’s eyes slid to Castiel for a moment before resting on Dean’s face again.

 

The angel wasn’t listening – he was rubbing his thumb and forefinger together absently and staring at the walls: framed needlepoints, neat watercolors of flowers with their names written in thin calligraphy underneath, a shadow box with a real robin’s egg and a dried corsage, two Victorian cameos, the features of the smooth white visages muddied with dust.

 

“Cas?”

 

He jerked at Dean’s voice, facing the brothers, hands falling to his sides.

 

“Bed?” Dean said, and Cas hesitated a moment before nodding, opting for quiet.

 

Sam smiled gently, trying to not add to the tension that was already filling up the room. Dean reached up and shook Sam’s shoulder, hand kneading it affectionately. He cuffed him on lightly on the cheek, Sam ducking a little to get away from the brush of his knuckles.

 

“See you in the morning, kid,” Dean mumbled, moving to playfully punch Sam’s arm. Sam rubbed his face, shaking his head.

 

“Yeah, yeah,” he half-laughed, following Dean with his eyes as he trailed out of the kitchen and into the hallway.

 

“Goodnight, Sam,” Cas said softly, and didn’t wait for an answer, following Dean, stepping carefully, as though he were trying to place his feet in the exact places Dean’s boots had been.

 

Dean was waiting by the staircase, outlined in white light from the kitchen and the one lamp on in the parlor. Picture frames and wall hangings winked at Cas as he passed them, his foot nudging at rugs and carpets spread along the oak floors. The air was getting cooler by the second, the altitude and the breeze outside rustling through the house, drawing little creaks and pops and soft sighing sounds from the walls.

 

The staircase was wide and solid, turning at the first landing and then continuing up to a second and eventually a third at the top of the house. Dean leaned against the scrolled end of the bannister, staring up; a huge window at the second floor scattered starlight onto the wall, the shadows shifting with the movements of the trees on that side of the house.

 

It might have been the dark, or the chirps in the yard, or the heady fragrance of flowers, but there was a roundness to the inside. The outside was very square. It had neat edges and flat faces and a very distinct slope towards the back, the roof slanting away like its own ridge. If not for the ivy or the round cap of the porch it would have looked strange. Such a huge square house in the middle of the woods.

 

“This is a salt box house,” Dean said suddenly, clearing away Cas’ cloudy thoughts, trying to fill the silence, to keep the lid on it all. “The roof. That’s how you can tell.” He mimicked with his forearm.

 

“Salt box,” Cas repeated, and the word itself seemed like the house; rectangular. But not the inside, he thought. No, the inside was not so sharp. The rooms were well-built, yes, and these were square as well, and sturdy, and straight, but they were not sharp.

 

The staircase was all angles, he knew, but they were easy angles that curved towards the top floors. It was a very broken-in house, Cas decided. A very comfortable house that seemed to be tucking itself up for the night, folding its legs in like a sleeping cat. There was a rattle of dishes from the kitchen and the rush of the tap and Dean stared up again, and Cas looked at the walls, at the gleaming glass and glossy paneling, enjoying the soft noise Sam was making.

 

His eyes traveled back to Dean. The heavy line of his legs and the gentle swell of sides at his hips and his stomach, the taut tendons of his neck, head tipped back, gazing up – up at the starlight.

 

Castiel forgot about his bruises and the bites. He forgot about the ache in his lower back and the weakness in his legs. Forfeited all of it for the cord of desire winding down his spine, the vine-like spiral nestling between his vertebrae, the buzzing places at the back of his knees and the arches of his feet.

 

He wanted to run his hand up the length of Dean. Measure the breadth of his chest against his own.

 

“You are remarkable.”

 

“Hmm?” Dean fixed his eyes back on the angel standing a few steps away.

 

Cas considered saying it again but didn’t. He closed the distance between them instead, fisting the collar of Dean’s jacket and pulling their mouths together. It was a dry kiss, but firm.

 

Insistent of some point Castiel was unsure he could convey otherwise.

 

They separated, under the sound of the water still running in the kitchen. Cas’ fingers dropped to Dean’s, tangling them together. Dean’s eyes were closed and his mouth was slightly parted, lips slack and wanting, unconsciously following his own.

 

“Upstairs,” Cas whispered, and Dean nodded, as though they wouldn’t have gotten there otherwise. Cas tried to hide his urgency, tried to temper the heat already starting to prick under his fingernails.

 

It wasn’t bad yet. It wasn’t wrecked yet.

 

This was just cracking the lid. No harm done. They’d have to open it up eventually, so maybe the controlled delay, a more calculated approach, was all that they had needed. If you could predict frenzy you could adjust. There could be someone to drive the car if you saw the cliff coming.

 

“All our shit’s still in the car…” Dean breathed against his mouth, and Cas shook the haze off – he hadn’t realized they’d been kissing again, that Dean’s back was shoved into that scroll of the bannister. That their hands had wandered and snaked around jackets and wormed past the layers to skin.

 

He flushed and tripped backwards up the stairs, watching Dean slip out the front door, there and gone, a blink of light and then a shadow swallowed up into the darkness of the lawn. Cas turned and climbed the stairs, focusing on the softness of the wood under his palm. Broken in, worn down, soft, an easy glide.

 

Rounded under his fingers.

 

Not sharp.

 

 

* * *

 

They’d chosen the first door they’d come to: a decently sized room with faded wallpaper and heavy walnut furniture and two chairs that must have at one point belonged to a dining set. The quilt on the bed was thin enough for the summer and Dean immediately cracked the window looking out to the back, stopping a moment to press his forehead against the cool pane and stare down at the dark back garden. He could make out the vague shapes of the trees and the laundry posts and the sagging weight of the calico dress on the line and the muddled, hunched mounds of the flower beds.

 

They saw all this in the yellow light of a teetering lamp on one of the nightstands – Castiel had fought with the switch, the pin jammed; he had to press his thumb down hard and the bulb flickered to life, stuttering momentarily. The golden light spilled over the bureau and the towering walnut armoire, casting over the tan carpet and the sheets with little mauve flowers on them. They stacked their clothes in messy rectangles on one of the chairs and Cas pulled the quilt down and slid into the bed, the frame squeaking in surprise at his weight.

 

“There’s no dust in here,” Dean said, over the drum of night sounds coming from the window. He swiped his hand over the top of the bureau and inspected it. “It’s like she _knew_.”

 

“She said she kept it clean for people. Not only us,” Cas said, watching the anxiety creep over Dean’s features. “She hardly could have known about us, Dean.”

 

“Maybe,” the hunter said distantly, still staring at his hand.

 

“Come here,” Cas said, and then again, softer, his legs rubbing at the sheets. He chuckled. “Come here. I’m cold.”

 

Dean managed a smile, and came to him, lowered himself onto the mattress, unsurprised when Cas rolled over, towards him. His arm was already arced out to accommodate his shoulders. His hand curled around the back of Dean’s neck, thumb rubbing circles.

 

The yellow light was still on, and Cas could feel the hum of Dean’s body, a thrum radiating through his thin clothes.

 

A casual shift closer, nothing unnatural, a gesture of invitation with the tilt of their heads, the silent dare to do something and a snap and a growl of desire as soon as they touched.

 

Clothes suddenly felt wet and dragging, plastered to them, too close, not close enough, and what were they to do with these damn clothes? All the second skin, doing away with it, and the cliff was getting closer, but someone was driving the car, someone _had_ to be driving the car.

 

How were they going to survive the ruin otherwise?

 

Cas’ hooked his arms around Dean’s neck and Dean came down like revelation. Searing heat of their bodies fighting to come together—Dean’s hands roughly hauling him closer under the covers, hands cupping his ass, squeezing his thighs, the scratch of Cas' nails on Dean’s scalp, the harsh grip of the short hairs at the base of his skull.

 

Everything was second skin. The air, the blankets, their own fucking bodies and it wasn’t _enough_ , but God, if they could just fishhook their fingers just right then none of it would matter.

 

Dig each other out from under the craze of the yellow light, like headlights.

 

At some point the driver had abandoned the wheel and now they were getting off in the back seat and _fuck_ the cliff. Mad, mad, mad. Gears mashing and hot breaths, oil slicks, and the bright burning furious thought that the problem was that they could hear each other through the rubble of it all. Tires scraping gravel, going nowhere fast. Cliffs with rivers at the bottom, rushing water, rushing blood in their ears. No, _no_ , Cas could feel the heat of the fear rising up under Dean's skin, needed to push it back down. They could do this. They could—

 

Desperate to get out of the hot metal and hands like axes carving up their sides, twisting and writhing to get _out,_ to _get_ to each other—

 

Dean wrenched himself off of Cas and nearly fell out of the bed in his haste.

 

Castiel sat up, watching Dean pant, watching him wipe his bruised mouth. Felt the swell of his own lip.

 

Castiel brought his knees up, two mountains under the cover, palming his forehead.

 

“Just,” he said, trying for it, his mind a frenzy. “If we _talk_ about this. We have to sort it out…there has to be _something—_ there’s something we’re not—”

 

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Dean said, words dead in the air, dead in his mouth. He threw up his arms weakly. “It’s fucked – it’s fucked up.”

 

“We’re just missing something,” Cas continued, murmuring, wracking his brain.

 

“Missing what? Another excuse?”

 

Dean shook his head, Cas lifting his face to look at him again, standing alone in the middle of the unfamiliar room, bare chest flushed.

 

“Because that’s all we are gonna get out of it! Another excuse as to why we can’t do this _one_ thing! Fuck, Cas, this is supposed to be the _easy_ part of it!”

 

Cas rubbed at his face, averting his eyes.

 

“Of _all_ the shit we’ve been through, this is the part I thought we’d be able to handle! The part that would have made up for the other shit that was more complicated, that we’d have _this_ , and we don’t, because when the fuck does _anything_ go the way I want it to!?”

 

“It’s not all bad,” Cas murmured. “It’s not all bad, Dean. Even the things outside of this—”

 

“I don’t want that!” Dean nearly shouted, only controlling himself so as not to wake up Mattie, or call up Sam. He paced back and forth, leaned on the bureau one second and went to the window the next, making circles, raking his hands through his hair.

 

“I don’t care about that! I want this to be good! I don’t want to fight everything all the time! I want to kiss you without hurting you, is that so much to fucking ask?”

 

Cas knew that it wasn’t a question he was meant to answer. Dean’s mouth caved and Castiel thought he might cry, but he didn’t. His voice was very thin.

 

“Cas—something’s happening to me or to us and it’s getting worse. I don't know if it's the job, or—or something else—” He ran his hands over his face, body panicked. “It’s like something is in me, it’s in me and it won’t leave, and I thought it was gone when that old man fucked with my head, I thought it was gone – I thought I had cried it out, but it’s different, it’s still kicking around in me, and when I touch you, God, when I touch you—it wants to claw straight out of me, it wants to get out at you, it wants you—it wants you so bad it makes me crazy, I can’t even think…I can’t even fucking think—

 

“I’m tired of it!” he cried, frantic, staring hard and quick at Cas and then back at the rug.

 

God. Just looking at him and the itch crawled back under his skin, a base desire beyond what he had ever felt. To claim and be claimed and join, to couple himself to Cas and never separate again.

 

“I’m tired of having to deal with this shit all the time! Every time I get close to you, every time I try to do right to you, be good to you, something fucks it up, and I’m tired of having it hold me! I just want to love you right, is that too much? I want to love you the way I want to! Why is that always too much?”

 

Cas sat up straighter, abruptly, finding his voice again in the midst of Dean’s tirade.

 

“What did you say?”

 

Dean began to pace again, and Cas stared at him. The hunter's mouth had clamped shut like an iron trap as if he'd realized what he'd said.

 

“ _Dean_.”

 

Dean stopped and turned to him, face agonized.

 

“Without—” Cas paused. “Without all of the rest, without all the other…say that again.”

 

Dean’s mouth opened and closed and he looked away. He tripped backwards and sank heavily into one of the chairs, staring out the window into the violet night.

 

For a long moment they froze there in tableau—Dean staring at the dark, Cas staring at him, at the soft curve of his jaw and the set of his mouth and the pallor of his face in the wake of what he'd said.

 

There was the soft sound of the mattress and Cas’ bare feet padding across the floor. He paused, crouched down, knees on the cool floor, and touched Dean’s knee.

 

Dean shook his head slowly from side to side, eyes dazed and sad. He didn't look at him. Almost as if he couldn't bear to.

 

Another picture, another photograph instant that lasted five times itself. Something was trembling in Dean that Castiel couldn't name. All the anger had gone out of him, all the fervor and fever and fear of their touches. The room was empty of it, sagging a little with blue light and quiet.

 

Wordlessly, Cas laid his head against Dean’s thigh, leaning into his leg. He sat there on the floor and closed his eyes, breathing, waiting for him to gather himself, and speak.

 

A long few minutes later Dean’s hand came to rest on his head, fingers stroking over his hair, combing it back behind his ear. The tender motion went on for what seemed hours.

 

“I love you and I don’t know what to do,” Dean whispered.

 

Cas pressed into the slow brush of Dean’s palm a little longer before he stood, and eased carefully into Dean’s lap, holding Dean’s head down against his neck, scratching gently at his shoulder the way Dean had done to him so many times.

 

“I love you,” Dean repeated, a little choked, a little shocked, and Cas hushed him.

 

“I know,” he said, voice brushing over Dean’s ear as he kissed his temple.

 

He smiled a little, kissing Dean’s forehead, mapping his hairline with his mouth. He held Dean’s face in his hands, thumbs brushing over his cheekbones, so close that the golden scatter of freckles on his brow blurred. He kissed under his left eye, then his right. Their foreheads touched and Cas bumped their noses together.

 

“I think I’ve always known.”

 

 

* * *

 

Cas pulled him gently to bed a little later that night, after they'd had their fill of sitting by the window together in the errant dark breezes, the sound of the river far off down below. It was so close they could smell it, the muddy water, that round tang of it; though they'd been crossing it back and forth all this time they'd never felt so near to it before.

 

There was no fumbling, no biting or grabbing or pulling. It wouldn't have felt right after what had happened. Instead they lay in the dark, unable to see one another in the blackness left behind from the yellow light turning off, and Castiel found the bruises and raised marks on Dean's neck and face with the touch of his fingers, smoothed them; Dean kissed him gently, controlled, pulling himself in. Cautious in the wake of his confession. He seemed, still, a little afraid, a little tight in the middle.

 

“I'm not gonna hurt you anymore,” he said, at some pinpoint in the stretch of hours, sharp and firm. “I won't.”

 

“We'll make it work.”

 

“I love you.”

 

“I know.”

 

“I really, really love you, Cas.”

 

“Can you hear the river?” Cas asked, closing his eyes, holding Dean's face in his hands. A dreamy little whisper, and Dean's words caught in his mouth like breath, heavy and sweet on his tongue. “It's like a song.”

 

“Cas.”

 

“I love you too.”

 

“Cas.”

 

“It's okay.”

 

The lazy conversation fell away and the river lapped at the banks of the slope, far far below the house on the ridge, and they slept so close and tangled that in their dreams they could not tell their bodies apart from one another.

 

 

* * *

 

In all her talk of hospitality, one thing managed to slip from Mathilda Lawrence's mind—she'd neglected to mention the fog.

 

When Cas woke the next morning, warm and comfortable in the gentle loop of Dean's arms, the octagon window in the wall was a blank slate of white—tendrils of it creeping in over the sill, so thick and heavy that it seemed to press and intrude into the room itself. Even the branches of the trees outside were obscured.

 

Cas yawned, and sat up, stirring Dean awake. The room was dim and cool in the thin mist-drenched sunlight, the kind of half-hearted morning that meant rain later, and much of it. The angel rubbed sleep from his eyes.

 

“Are we going to be able to get down the rise in that?” he said, and Dean followed his gaze to the thick smoky whiteness blurring the world outside.

 

“Aw, dammit,” Dean mumbled, sliding out of bed. He went to the window and cracked it further, leaning through the tiny opening. Even close up to the outside of the house, now, he could only barely see the slates of the roof below, vanishing almost as soon as they started. He could hear the current a little ways off and down, could smell the almost overpowering presence of the garden, but for all intents and purposes the entire world had been obliterated by the fog rolling in from the water. “Yeah, there's no way in Hell I'm taking my baby down in this.”

 

“I'm sure she won't mind us staying until it clears up.”

 

Dean turned, leaning one bare arm on the windowsill, shoulders twisting. “Yeah, you'd like that, huh.”

 

Cas shrugged. “Better than driving for hours in a random direction. Maybe this Mathilda woman can tell us where to go next. And we can relax a while.”

 

“Relax.”

 

“Mmm.”

 

Dean stretched his arms high above his head, popping out the kinks in his bones and muscles, and Cas watched, his legs bent out like a loose diamond, shoulders hunched, his hair mussed from sleep. He thought he could watch the movement of Dean's body beneath his skin forever, the twisting and cording of tendons and flesh, the spiral staircase of his spine, the broad expanse of his shoulders like sturdy wood. _Built like a house_ , he thought, a mortal idiom he'd heard a few times.

 

He smiled a little, and waited for Dean to come back to bed in the high gloaming of morning, to kneel on the mattress and kiss him, welcome him awake, before the call came up to them for breakfast.

 

 

* * *

 

Mattie, as she was elbow-deep in dishwashing with Cas by her side, that morning, couldn't help herself. All the tension between her guests seemed to have floated away as the fog had floated in that morning; she didn't ask for the impetus, but she could guess.

 

She was an old woman, but she knew volumes about love.

 

“Pity about the fog,” she said, lightly, and Cas hummed in agreement. He finished drying a plate and set it down in its place on the countertop—he liked the rhythm of it, the action. It felt like a good thing to do with the mist lying heavy on the ground outside the screen door, blocking out the trees and the flowers.

 

“As soon as it clears up we'll be out of your way,” Cas said, by way of apology. “Dean's—we're not sure about taking the car down.”

 

“Oh, goodness, I wouldn't dream of it. It's a tricky road.” Mattie shook her old head, firmly and wisely, handing him another plate wet and warm with dishwater. “A Riverlander's house is open for as long as it is needed, so don't you pay that no mind, darling. That's what my Aaron always used to say.”

 

Cas paused, looking down at the streaks of water on the plate. Flowers were etched in gold leaf around its edge.

 

“Do you often have guests like us?” he asked, trying to remain casual. “People appearing and asking for a place to sleep?”

 

“Oh, here and there,” the old woman said, nodding.

 

“It's only that it seems you knew we were coming.”

 

She was being very careful, he thought, to avoid his eyes. She pulled her hands from the sink and dried them slowly on her apron, as if considering cautiously what to say.

 

Finally she looked up and out the window, and he was reminded of Sugar Byrne, and the conversation in her kitchen. A parallel, he thought. She'd called him _star._

 

“Truth be told,” Mattie Lawrence said, more to herself than to Cas, speaking almost inwardly as if to someone tucked away inside her, “I do believe this place has been waiting for a very long time to receive guests like you.”

 

“Everyone we've met,” Cas said, “everyone we've spoken to, who's shown us hospitality or sent us on our way or answered our questions—they all seem to think very highly of _guests like us._ ”

 

The dim sun glittered on the tortoiseshell comb in the old woman's hair, glimmering there one moment and gone the next, swallowed up by the fog.

 

“What exactly does this have to _do_ with us?”

 

“Oh, honey.” She smiled a little sadly. “I don't think it's my place to say.”

 

“That's what everyone's been telling us.”

 

“You've been following them happenings.” Mattie gently took the damp towel from Castiel's hands and placed it back on its rack beneath the sink. “Miracles—hmm? All the way down from the top of the river.”

 

Cas set his jaw. He wasn't sure if he should even ask how she'd known, or how she knew anything at all.

 

“Both sides of the veil wakin' up, getting ready for the day,” she continued, leaning her old bones against the countertop. “When very old things get set in motion, when the river pulls up its bottom and turns itself over, people notice, you see. People like those boys, creatures like you.”

 

“People like us.”

 

“I'm an old woman, darling,” she said, smiling at him. “I know what kind of a thing you are.”

 

Cas felt a soft chill spark up his spine. He was momentarily transfixed by her, this gentle little old woman in her pale kitchen, the cool air curling in under the door and through the screen. The lines in her face, he thought, said so much, but he didn't know what they meant.

 

“Fact of the matter is,” she said, “I think I know what it all is, what it's got to do with you and your boys, and the love in it all. But I'm getting close to the end of my days, honey, and I can't know for sure.”

 

“Is it dangerous?” Cas asked, a little breathless—or winded, perhaps. “All of this, the things leading us down the river. This—religion. Is it bad?”

 

“Oh, honey, no. Not a bit of badness in it.”

 

“We're running out of places to go,” Cas said, as she turned from him, shuffled slowly to the pantry to hang up her apron.

 

“Plenty of grand old things to see, still,” she said, pulling down the sleeves of her sweater despite the gentle warmth of the late summer morning. “I'm sure I can point you all in the right direction. But none of that right now.” She closed the pantry and shook her finger at him, the bony gnarled thing, with humor, as if a light had sprung into her old body. “You children take it easy today. Catch your breath, shake the road out of your bones. And you can take the path down the ridge when the fog lifts and be on your way to wherever the river wants you next.”

 

 

* * *

 

It was a strange day they passed there on the ridge; none of them knew quite what to do with themselves in a house without anything to research or suss out.

 

Mattie gave them full and enthusiastic permission to explore as much as they liked. Her house was enormous, and Sam quickly lost himself in the room with bookshelves all along the walls, the two wide windows looking out into the side yard, all blanked out by the fog. When Cas wandered past the open oaken door he saw him sitting in the huge winged armchair, a stack of old books on the side table at his wrist, lost in what looked like an ancient copy of _Kidnapped!_ He was enraptured—Cas realized he must not have much time, these days, to drown himself in anything other than news articles and obituaries.

 

Cas smiled softly and left him to his fiction.

 

He was in love with this house, the hugeness of it, the neat and tidy sprawling of it. With his hands in his pockets he had already seen every room, started at the top and worked his way down the flights of stairs, peering in the open doors at the obscene cleanliness of the guest rooms, the little bits of life on every shelf and in every china cabinet, paraphernalia from the old woman's life, the days before she'd opened her house for guests. Wedding photos in smudged and stuttered black and white in oval frames on the wallpapered partitions; he ran his fingers along the walls, the paper smooth under his touch, trying to memorize and map the labyrinthine hallways.

 

Dean had gone out, he knew, to fix a rattling under the hood of the Impala. Cas let himself be drawn through the quiet corridors to the front door, the porch light on over it, casting dim swallowed light into the heavy white pall that lay over everything.

 

The Impala was a black shape in the fog, and Dean a silhouette; the sounds of metal on metal rang almost obnoxiously through the empty echoing air. Besides his noise, and the chirping of birds in the trees, the ridge was almost unnaturally quiet. Cas pushed his hands into his pockets and wandered towards the anchoring blotch of dark on the drive, pulling out from under the porch light. The wood creaked under his feet.

 

“Hey,” Dean said, when he heard him approaching through the dew-wet grass. He stood up from his stoop, wiped engine grease on his jeans, leaving dark smears. “Bored?”

 

Cas shrugged. “I thought I'd walk down to the river. See it properly.”

 

“Don't get lost,” Dean said, a little laugh in his voice, a little lilt. He'd gone so light, Cas thought, after the night before, as if he'd pulled all his own weight off his own shoulders without the help of gods or magic by letting those words off his tongue. It felt good, Cas thought, to exist in the presence of those words. _I love you_. Like a little lamp in the air over their heads, sputtering but shining.

 

“I won't.”

 

Cas took the last step between them and smoothed his hand down Dean's chest, there in the fog. It felt almost private, the heavy white shroud around them, sealing them off from everyone else; Cas nudged his face up to kiss him, just gently, and Dean smiled against his mouth, his hand coming to rest on the angel's hip not in possession but in affection.

 

“I'm almost done working,” Dean said, soft, their warm breath trapped between them. “Might come down and join you when I'm finished.”

 

“I'd like that,” Cas said. He imagined Dean's body pulling from the fog behind him, strong arms wrapping around his waist, kissing, perhaps, in the soft light, and something stirred in his stomach that was pleasantly hot.

 

He touched Dean's arm, let his hand slip down it, and smiled, before moving sideways off into the whiteness, carefully placing his feet, looking for the dip in the dirt that led down the steep slope to the rushing of the river.

 

 

* * *

 

The ridge was steeper than Cas had thought, and slick with mud and dead leaves left over from the autumn and winter before. He had to fight to keep from slipping and sliding and losing his balance, stepping sideways to stay upright.

 

The Mississippi emerged from the haze, a watercolor painter's streak of muddy brown underneath the low clouds, eating up the bank and the green grass bowed towards it as if in homage. Mathilda had a dock—he could see, looking downriver, docks for each house on the ridge above, some with boats tethered to their posts, some without, but all with lanterns welded to the pilings, black metal things from some bygone decade, all unlit.

 

He picked his way gently through the mud up onto the creaking boards of Mattie's dock, hesitantly made his way out to its end, precarious and warped over the current. Turning to look back, he could only see the slope, and nothing above it—not the edge of the rise, not the Impala, not the house. He was sealed off from everything else, reduced to the floating riverbank and the dock and the water, like some nebulous dream-world.

 

Careful, feeling out the rotted places on the dock with his feet, Cas lowered himself down, felt the urge to pull off his shoes and socks and roll up the ends of his jeans and let his feet dangle in the water. He leaned forward, letting the current pull gently at him, shoulders hunched. The water was cool and inviting; if it had been a warmer, clearer day, he thought, he wouldn't have minded pulling off his clothes and wading out into the shallows. Not too far—he couldn't swim very well, and neither, to his knowledge, could Jimmy Novak—but just enough to feel surrounded by the water, pushed and pulled a little, greeted.

 

It was so incredibly, enormously quiet under the leaning shadow of the ridge, secluded in his island of being. Cas thought briefly that the fog looked like grace, like the old and dying breath of his brothers and sisters.

 

Mud drifted beneath his feet in the shallows of the river and he heard a small sound, the water breaking, and leaned forward, ducking his head down between his knees to see where it had come from.

 

In the dimness under the dock it was hard to make it out—a fish had broken the surface, nosed up for a moment, and now its silky back was slipping under the water again. Cas was surprised to feel it nudge beneath his foot as it made its way back into the river proper, its fin sliding against the bottom of his heel.

 

He caught one more glimpse of it before it vanished—just long enough to see the whiskers trailing from the flesh behind its mouth.

 

Catfish.

 

He smiled, and blinked, and his smile fell. He was seized with a sudden urge to slip down into the river and follow it, almost, but before he could move or think the dock creaked behind him and he turned his head.

 

“Hello, Dean.”

 

“Hey.”

 

Cas turned back to the water, but the catfish was gone, its muddy blue swallowed up by the current.

 

Dean sat down on the dock behind him, legs settling to frame Cas', and his arms twined around his waist, just as the angel had imagined. He smiled. Dean was a warm and solid press at his back; he let his chin settle into the curve of Castiel's shoulder and Castiel leaned back into him, their bodies conforming perfectly to one another, both of them watching the river run by.

 

“Heard you talking to the old woman this morning,” Dean said.

 

Cas breathed, comfortable. “Mm.”

 

“What'd she say?”

 

“That we shouldn't worry,” Cas replied, softly. “That there wasn't anything bad in any of this.”

 

Dean snorted, unconvinced. “Yeah, I'll bet. She's a Riverlander. This is like their Rapture or something, of course she's gonna think it's good.”

 

“She knew we were coming, Dean.” Cas tipped his head back a little against the hunter's shoulder, closing his eyes to the fog. “She'd prepared her house for _guests like us._ And we've been shown nothing but kindness and hospitality by these people.”

 

“It still rubs me wrong.”

 

“I trust her. I've trusted all these people,” Cas said. “I think Sam has, too. Why not you?”

 

“Good things don't happen to us, Cas.” Dean shifted, pulling Cas' body in closer to his as if to keep him from the pull of the river. “They just don't. Nothing with our names on it has ever been good.”

 

“Then I would think...that makes you past due for the exception to the rule.”

 

Dean didn't answer that. He sighed, and closed his eyes against Cas' neck.

 

They sat above the river for a time together and Castiel watched the water, waiting for the catfish to make a reappearance, waiting for the brush of its slick back beneath the soles of his feet again.

 

 

* * *

 

They went inside, back up the staggered slope hand in hand to keep from slipping down in the mud, once the afternoon sun had begun to dip and the fog had become chill, and what sounded like a thunderstorm began to protrude into the early evening. They made it to the porch of Mattie's house just as the rain broke and began to dissipate the fog, and they stood for a while under the portico roof, leaning against each other, watching it pour down and beat into the ground.

 

They felt loose, boneless, almost renewed, and Cas let his body rest against Dean's, the soft swell of his hip and the broad solidity of his chest. He smelled of work and damp, and Castiel's shoes dangled from two fingers, his bare feet still streaked with mud even after he'd scraped them on the welcome mat. They stood under the domed roof and watched the rain wash away the fog, clearing everything away like a finger drawn through breath-steam on a window, opening up the world again.

 

As they turned to go inside Dean's eyes were drawn up to the top of the door, just for a moment, just long enough to see the catfish carved into the wood, and the dancing stars on either side of it, trailing out and away and ending in curlicued flourishes. An old and weathered embellishment looking out over the water.

 

Then they were inside, in the warmth of the house and the smell of something on in the kitchen, and Sam with a face drawn from a day of reading coming out to tell them that dinner was ready, and for a moment, with Cas tucked in against his side and the rain behind them through the open door, Dean felt extraordinarily at home.

 

 

* * *

 

Mattie insisted they stay the night, that the rain would clear up the fog altogether by the next morning and that they could be on their way.

 

It was an early night, and Sam volunteered to help her with the dinner dishes while Dean and Cas made their way up the stairs, so much easier, he thought, than they had the night before. Their arms were hooked around each other's waists and he couldn't help but smile at it. Their bruises were fading, too.

 

In the room at the top of the staircase, bed still unmade from the previous evening, Cas didn't bother turning on the yellow light. In the deepening dark they undressed for bed, without conversation, relaxed, their bodies pliant. From the open window the smell of rain overwhelmed the smell of the river and it pattered on the glass like tiny fingernails tapping to be let inside.

 

When they lay down together Dean held Castiel's face and kissed him, not too hard and not too deep, and they tangled themselves together for warmth and comfort and watched the rain leave glimmering streaks in the underglow of the porch light on the window, and the leafy branches of the tree outside scrape Morse messages on its surface.

 

Cas noted hazily that the wound on Dean's lip where he'd nearly bitten through was almost healed, nothing but a dark scab now.

 

He was glad there was no push and pull, no animal avalanche, right now. At the very least they could kiss and caress and lie in each other's arms without pain or shame and that, frustrating as it might have been, was enough for them, for now, until something could be made of the problem that existed between them.

 

 

* * *

 

By long morning the fog was gone and Cas lay awake, pressed in close to Dean, watching the light spread itself thin again. The clouds still low, the world still wet, but he was safe beneath the blankets in Mathilda Lawrence's house, his hand resting on the place where Dean's heart beat in his sleep.

 

 

* * *

 

“Well,” the old woman told them over their final breakfast in her home, “I reckon you won't be finding too many more miracles in that binder you've got.”

 

“Do you—recommend any place for us to go?” Sam asked. “Anywhere we can find out more about—whatever all this is?”

 

She nodded into her gathered fingers, her eyes drifting over them all. “I would think,” she said, “that your best bet would be to find more Riverlanders. People born and bred into the tradition, unlike me, convert that I am.”

 

She directed Dean towards a map book in the next room, and he brought it in for her; she showed them where the river met the mountains further south in Missouri, a townless place, a general blotch encircled by her fingers.

 

“Dozens of them up in the Ozarks,” she said. “I'm sure someone there can tell you where y'all need to go next. Or give you more answers than I can.”

 

As they packed up to leave the lovely house on the ridge she insisted on making lunch for them to take on the road, and presented them at the door, shouldering their bags and shifting on their feet, with sandwiches in plastic bags, and a brilliant smile to send them on their way.

 

Sam was the last to move out onto the porch, and as he was waiting to file out behind Cas Mathilda snagged his arm, just briefly, and pushed something into his arms.

 

He looked down. A pair of boots, brown and worn with age but still in good condition. They looked about as ancient as the woman herself.

 

“My Aaron's,” she said, patting his arm. “I saw that yours were comin' apart at the seams, honey. You're a walker—you need fine shoes if you're goin' to walk the riverbank with those two out there on your arm. You're their dust, child. They're gonna need a strong arm to lean on.”

 

She gestured to Dean and Castiel's retreating backs, and he looked at her, confused.

 

“Ma'am, I can't take these,” he said. “They're—your husband's, I'm just a stranger.”

 

“Oh, sweet boy.” Her hand fell away from his arm and she peered up at him with a soft smile on her old furrowed face. “Ain't no such thing.”

 

 

* * *

 

Construction on the highway had cleared up enough by the time they reached it, after the slow crawl down from the ridge, that they managed to be out of Elsbrook just as another storm was broiling on the horizon up ahead. The long stretch of asphalt was near-deserted in both directions, and Cas had rolled the back seat windows down, and cool electrified air was rippling in as they sped down through hills toward the clouds.

 

The river ran parallel to them, down and a ways, and Cas shifted to the other side of the car the better to see it, poking his head out of the open window to watch it roll and glimmer as if racing them towards the storm ahead. Trees whipped by under the darkening sky and by the time they'd left all semblance of town and settlement behind the thunderhead was huge, looming over the highway like some behemoth beast, setting the air strange and blue.

 

When Cas asked Dean to pull over, to watch it roll in, the air was just strange and blue enough that he complied.

 

He parked the Impala on a jutting bit of turn-off, separated from the river by a few trees and a stumbling slope, and they all got out to stand on the gravel. The storm was hurtling in faster than Cas had thought, barreling closer, curling and green at the bottom, weird and purpled with the shadows of itself.

 

Thunder growled to herald its arrival and Cas circumvented the car to stand closest to its oncoming weight, the wind cool and wet picking up as it slipped across the three hunters' faces.

 

“We shouldn't stay out too long,” Sam said, but without any firmness in his voice. He was staring at it, at the smoky suggestion of the rain beginning to fall up ahead from its vast underbelly.

 

Dean wasn't watching the weather—he was watching Cas, the tails of his borrowed plaid shirt fluttering backward like bird's wings in the wind, his hair tossed and tumbled. Dean was beginning to lose track of the number of these moments, the instants where he wished to God he were some kind of artist, that he could capture Castiel in all the places where he fit—the orchard in Wisconsin, the bedroom in Galilee, and now on the nameless road looking off into the distance, his hands a little akimbo as if to embrace the rain, as if waiting for some enormous revelation to seize him whole.

 

The thunder howled louder and the angry clouds were leaching closer, eating up the sky, and the rain was becoming less of a suggestion and more of a reality—stray droplets began to land on Dean's face, and he looked up, felt Sam follow his lead. All of it grey and low-hanging, spitting out and back the way they'd come, the thunderhead once distinct now melting across the sky.

 

All at once the downpour broke, not gentle as it had been on the ridge but furious, as if some huge tap had been turned on in Heaven. Dean heard Cas laugh, his jubilation stolen away on the wind, just before it occurred to him how soaked he'd become within instants. He looked to his brother, who had an arm held up over his head in some vain attempt to shelter himself, but with a grin on his face, the stupid smile of a child caught out in the deluge and past the point of caring. And Cas laughing for what seemed no reason at all, his body tipped back to receive the sacrament of it all, his eyes closed and lashes long and dark against his face and rainwater spilling into his open mouth.

 

Lightning struck with an enormous crack somewhere up ahead, a blinding flash that startled them all, and they scrambled back into the car as the storm picked up again and screamed down around them, blurring the river below into a muddy mess of blue and brown.

 

Sam shook his head like a dog and water spattered into Dean and Castiel's faces and they laughed—startled but laughing, soaked to the bone but laughing, and Dean pulled back onto the highway and Sam said “Dude, it's empty—gun it,” and he did just that.

 

They shrieked onto the wet asphalt with a groaning spin of the Impala's tires and were hurled forward, down the straight grey line under the curling green sky, Dean's foot against the floor of the Impala pushing the pedal down, the speedometer inching upwards fifty-sixty-seventy-eighty, teasing ninety, even, roaring down the road, eating it up under the screeching tires, and Sam with his wet hair hanging in his face laughing as the world slashes by in blurs of smudged color and the rain was sucked in through the open windows, and in the rear-view mirror Dean could see Cas leaning out the passenger side of the back, one arm stretched out into the open air, his face dazzled with droplets and lightning shattering the air, white streaks in their peripheral vision and the whole car filled with laughter for no reason, no reason at all.

 

The highway was wide and utterly empty and a dangerous slick of wet and thunder crashing like cymbals above, echoing and banging against the roof of the Impala. Outrunning the sound, outrunning the lightning, escaping the creeping cool blue and indigo and purple, and the river ran alongside them, racing them to wherever sunlight lay at the end of things. Castiel, his arm extended like a wing, sending them off in black metal flight.


	7. Somewhere in the Ozarks, MO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.”

It is important to recognize, in the case of such a journey, that sometimes it is not about _how_ one ends up in a place, but that one ends up there at all. While this is not true as a whole, in the case of that small town in Missouri, it is of lesser priority to document the rolling highway miles, the grey stripe of concrete starting to wind into the Ozark hills and the shift of the sun behind the trees as they drove.

 

While the scattered conversations leading up to stopping in that small slice of nowhere were filled with the charm of casual debates on where to sleep and eat, one could speculate it was really nothing more than the river’s will that landed them in that little valley.

 

The green hills rose up on either side, the trees deep in summer-time vibrancy and heavy with leaves. They had gotten off on some byway to look for a gas station and known they were approaching a town because of the suddenly reduced speed limit, slowing their easy seventy-five to a creeping thirty in a matter of feet.

 

If the village had a name, they didn't know it. There was one street, from what they could tell, and one stop light that was blinking yellow. There was a gas station, though, where they pulled in, and a motel across that one ribbon of road that made Mattie’s house look palatial.

 

“Call it?” Dean said, finger on the trigger of the gas pump, looking across the street to the motel. “I mean, everyone is telling us to get into the backwoods, and this is about as backwoods as I’ve ever seen.”

 

The three of them looked down the street into the town, the flat storefronts neat and well-kept despite the sag of age.

 

“But how do we know there will be Riverlanders?” Sam asked. They hadn’t seen any houses coming in. They must have been even further back, past the main drag, way off in those rising hills.

 

“Guess we’ll have to look around. See if there are any of those carvings over the doors like that one at the Lawrences',” Dean sighed, tapping the last of the gasoline out into the tank, closing it up and tucking the pump back onto its rack.

 

They agreed this was at least a start.

 

There was one extremely disinterested teenage girl manning the front desk at the motel they parked at, knee deep in a tabloid and rolling a tic-tac across her teeth as she jotted them down in the registry.

 

“We need a double,” Dean said, and she looked up at him through her lashes and then back down at the book she was recording them in.

 

“Don’t have doubles,” she said lazily, the oscillating fan further down the counter ruffling her hair as it swiveled. She scratched her bare shoulder and adjusted her tank-top strap.

 

“Seriously?”

 

She shrugged.

 

“Don’t have doubles. Only singles. Ain’t the city, slick,” she sighed, folding her hands over the binder. “I can get you two singles side by side.”

 

“That’s fine,” Sam interrupted, making the decision a little easier. “Also—do you have church services tomorrow?”

 

She tilted her head at Sam, casting him a look as if he were crazy, confirming what they had come here for.

 

“Not round here,” she said, laughing a little, flashing them the bottom of her hand. A perfect asterisk. “Why? You need a minister?”

 

“Something like that,” Cas said, and the girl crunched her tic-tac, thinking.

 

“Well, there’s stuff goin’ on this weekend, but if you need to get ahold of someone talk to Sheriff Jones.”

 

“And where can we find him?”

 

She shrugged again, reaching under the counter to pull out a box of keys. She rummaged through it and produced two, handing them both to Dean.

 

“Dunno right now,” she drawled. “If you find Peggy, his wife, she’d probably know.”

 

“You said some stuff was going on?”

  
She sighed dramatically.

 

“Look, all the guys went up in the hills to raise a house, so I don’t know where the sheriff is. But if you find Peggy she’ll tell you where he is and he can give you a number or somethin.' You ain’t gonna find any ministers in this town because we ain’t got none.”

 

“We really appreciate it,” Castiel said gently. “Do you know where we could find his wife?”

 

The teenager rolled her eyes and slapped her binder shut.

 

“Probably at home or at the store.” She hopped down from her stool and stared at them all, un-amused by all the questions. “Now, pardon me, but _I’m_ takin' a lunch break. Y’all need anything you can holler at me later.”

 

Sensing her disgruntlement, Dean thanked her with a heavy helping of sarcasm that was either ignored or went right over her head.

 

“How old you think she was anyway? Like thirteen?” Dean grumbled as they walked out of the lobby and under the steel awning to the little rusty doors of the motel.

 

“She said most of the guys were up somewhere else? Maybe she’s just running it for someone while they’re off doing whatever?”

 

“She could have checked the attitude.”

 

“She’s just a kid and it’s a hot day. How excited would you be?”

 

They were regarded by the sleepy-eyed windows as they opened the dusty rooms and dumped their gear inside. It was obvious that the place didn’t get very much traffic. The bed sheets were stiff, and though there was nothing particular that gave it away, there was a character to the furniture that spoke of age and solitude and a few stray travelers once in a blue moon.

 

All of it waiting, old, and quiet.

 

 _Preserved_ was a good word for it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was just shy of ten o’clock in the morning and they had hours to burn as they walked up the block. The ancient buildings drooped in the heat, but the painted glass windows were clean and well maintained – the sidewalk was swept and there were huge barrels of flowers stationed by the two or three lampposts.

 

“They’ve only got ten stores. She can’t be that hard to find,” Sam mused, looking up and down the little strip of street. A small grocery and drug, a hardware store, a barber-shop, a bank and a post office looked back at him. None of them were really closed, but there were a lot of drawn shades. It was exactly what you would have expected of a drowsy late-summer morning in a town as small as that one: deserted. Had the girl not explained away the absence of the men it would be easy to blame it on the heat.

 

There was a commotion, and a dog barked, running around the corner at the end row of buildings on the opposite side of the road. It yapped and danced and panted, and was soon followed by a clamor of kids – young boys with baseball bats slung over their shoulders and gloves dangling from their hips.

 

They seemed to come out of a history book or a film reel – they all wore jeans and soft cotton shirts or coveralls, adjusting their baseball caps on their dirt-streaked foreheads. Like they really had walked out of the pages of _Tom Sawyer_ with their easy stances and confident walks, even though their pant legs were dusty and their shirttails were messily hanging over their jeans. Strolling along, tossing out experimental dirty words and chittering like monkeys at the results.

 

They were headed for the drug store, the store closest to the three older men, and it was easy to see why: a Coke machine stood by the front door selling bottles for a quarter. While most of the herd flocked to the machine, digging in their pockets for change, one stayed back in the street and raised the baseball over his shoulder.

 

“Cade!”

 

Some other boy turned just as the ball lofted out into the air.

 

The baseball crashed through the dusty glass front of Coke machine, and Coke fizzed out of shattered bottles and pooled on the cement sidewalk. The group of boys stood there for a moment, staring at the broken glass, and the dog whined at the sound.

 

The hunters stood awkwardly out on the sidewalk in the silence that followed.

 

“What’d you do that for!” one of the boys yelled, and the kid who had tossed the offending baseball shrugged in horror.

 

“I-I don’t know! Cade, you were _supposed_ to catch it!”

 

“What, outta nowhere?”

 

“Robbie, lookit here!” one of them cried, reaching into the busted machine and pulling out a Coke bottle.

 

“They’re stealing,” Cas said with mild horror, shoving forward before Dean could put out a hand to stop him. It was only soda, after all.

 

“You! Put that back!” Cas yelled, ignoring Dean's groan of embarrassment.

 

The boys all turned as a group, panic-stricken.

 

“Listen to me!” Castiel continued, puffing his shoulders up. “Put it back, it doesn’t belong to you!”

 

“Shit!” some boy proclaimed, eyes lighting on Cas’ storm-dark features, all fury and intention to make them stay and take care of what they’d done.

 

The cornered cluster took one look at the angel bristling in irritation and did what any sensible kids would have done – they ran.

 

A few crammed their hands into the machine, pulling out bottles and shoving them under their arms, but most of them ran immediately, loping down the street, looking back every few yards to see Castiel’s angry face glaring at them. The angel was livid, standing beside the whirring machine and shaking his head as they galloped away, shrieking and whooping.

 

Once they were at a safe distance, they broke out into laughter, clinking bottles together to their victory, waving at Castiel with their star-marked palms and snickering to one another, bolting around the buildings, heading towards wherever they had come from. The dog trotted behind them, barking in glee, and soon nothing remained but the dusty footprints on the stoop of the store where they had formerly stood, and the slow leak of sugary syrup from the busted machine, where flies were already collecting on the little puddles.

 

Castiel deflated and let his hands slap against his sides. He didn’t turn around even as Sam hid his laughter and Dean bit the inside of his mouth, the first to move. The hunter ruffled his angel’s hair, pushing his head down playfully.

 

“Wow, man, you had _me_ scared!” he said, laughing, and Cas rolled his eyes.

 

“That was wrong. What they did.”

 

“They’re just kids. They do stupid things. You were _very_ vicious, don’t worry,” he teased.

 

Cas shrugged Dean off and looked at the machine, which Sam had come forward to inspect. Sam was about to say something, long fingers reaching in to pull out the baseball, when the door to the drug store rattled open and an older woman stood staring at them, face caught in panic.

 

“What is goin’ on here?” she shrieked, taking one look at the broken machine and the three strangers outside her store. Sam immediately withdrew his hand and put it up in defense.

 

“It’s not what it looks like,” Dean said swiftly, stepping protectively in front of his younger brother.

 

“Oh, I’m sure it ain’t!” the woman cried. “Oh, look at what you’ve done to my pop machine! You just wait, I’m gonna call Earl! He’ll deal with this. You _nasty_ boys—I _told_ Joe to close up that inn of his! I don’t like you _other_ folk coming round here! Stirring up trouble—”

 

“Ma’am, that’s really not what it looks like – there were some boys, come on, you’d have to have heard them.”

 

“We’ll just let Earl deal with it,” she snapped, her grey braid swinging behind her shoulder like a fat silver fish tail.

 

“Really, ma’am – ma’am,” Dean said, his voice softer, coming closer. “We – we really didn’t do it. Honest. Scout’s honor. If you could just let me show you, there’s a baseball in there, alright? Some boys, they were just messin’ around and they threw it—”

 

“How do I trust you?” she interrupted, her cheeks pink and flushed, her star-scrawled palms flashing as she flapped her hands like an irritated mother hen. “You could be bad boys! Coming up here – writing nasty things on my walls, breaking my pop machine! Don’t you think that it hasn’t happened before! You bad boys from upriver coming to meddle, coming to rouse us up—well, it won’t work. We’re peaceful and good, so don’t you try to do nothing else to nobody! I’ll just call Earl and he’ll come tell you how to get back to the highway.”

 

She turned and bustled back into her shop, the door clattering, and Dean groaned, rubbing his forehead.

 

“Hey, she said she’d call the sheriff,” Sam said softly, sheepishly, and Dean rolled his stiff neck.

 

“You better hope she calls the sheriff,” he muttered.

 

“I feel so terrible about her machine,” Cas said quietly, petting the wounded steel frame with a tender hand. He looked at the old yellowed buttons and touched them one by one.

 

“Well, when you leave something out it can get hurt,” Dean said, all brisk, and Castiel’s eyes quickly slid over the hunter and then guiltily looked back towards the case, expression shifting from one thing to the other as he mulled over Dean’s words.

 

Cas stroked the machine again, tapping his fingers on the metal edge.

 

“Glass is easy to replace, though. She can fix it,” Sam said. He knocked Cas’ shoulder affectionately, attempting to ease the concern that had clouded the angel’s face. It was obvious that there was something about it Cas had taken very personally. He rubbed Cas’ shoulder with his big hand, drawing his gaze upwards. “Nothing to it.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Sheriff Earl Jones was an honest man. He was prone to giving the benefit of the doubt, as well, but it didn’t take much convincing once they showed him the baseball.

 

“It was probably any number of boys up here,” he sighed, once they had recalled the story to him. “Sorry you fellas got all mixed up in it.” He shook his head, taking his stiff hat off and replacing it. He was a middle aged gentleman, and in the shade of the drug store it was easier to see that his wife’s grey hair was really just streaked over the mousy brown, giving the illusion that she was far older than she was.

 

At the moment she was looking hurt, leaning against door-frame, dabbing at her eyes every once in a while and sniffling, by all appearances mourning the loss of her soda machine.

 

“Is she alright?” Cas said solemnly, glancing at her and then back up at the heavyset man beside him. Dean tried to appear unimpressed by her theatrics, but he felt sorry for her, sorry that something precious to her had been broken, even if it was just an old Coke machine.

 

“Oh, she’s fine.” The sheriff smiled, reaching out his long arm to touch hers. She wrung her apron nervously and shifted. “A tough girl, that’s our Peg.” She lifted her rosy face to her husband’s and stared at him intently before drifting inside, into the shadows. The sheriff’s face drooped as soon as she’d left, swinging his gaze back to the three men before him.

 

“Mighty bad coincidence, that’s all, and an accident, but she’s got a little bit of bad feelings towards outsiders, sometimes.”

 

Through the window of the store, Sam could see her moving through the aisles, arranging things with care. With her back turned to them she walked easier, one foot in front of the other, Indian style.

 

Like a little girl would walk, scuffing her heels along tile.

 

Sam blinked, clearing the image his mind had projected away, shifting back into the conversation.

 

“Sometimes we get some rabble rousers. Wanna come up and start trouble. Drunk kids too stupid to know better, but they’ve put some bad graffiti in the washroom a few times and one time they scared Peg pretty bad. Told her to go down to the river and drown herself in if she was so inclined...” He trailed away. “Anyway, just bad talk, and she don’t mean any harm really. Just protective.”

 

“Is there anything we could do?” Sam said, his compassion getting the better of him. He ignored Dean’s arguing stare. “To really show her we don’t mean anything bad? Maybe we could—fix something for her? We’re pretty handy, and we don’t have much cash.”

 

Earl Jones gave them a long look, sizing them up.

 

“You know anything about carpentry?” he said, shifting his attention to Dean, tilting his head in interest.

 

Dean shifted uncomfortably.

 

“A little here and there. Not much formal work, no. But I know how to work all the tools.”

 

Earl Jones smiled toothily at him.

 

“Well, it’s more for me than Peg, but we’re putting a house up a few miles from here for some newlyweds, and we sure could use some young men. We’ve got most of it done, but having shoulders like yours—” He nodded at Dean. “That’d be heaven-sent.”

 

Dean flushed, and Cas lifted his chin slightly, giving him a sideways glance, appraising the very feature the sheriff had cited.

 

“It’d get you out of the main street, and that’d probably make her feel better. Give her some time to cool off.”

 

Sam looked at his brother, eyebrows raised.

 

“Sure,” Dean sighed, holding out his hand for the sheriff to take. “We’ll help you this afternoon.”

 

The sheriff gave a deep laugh, a rich baritone sound that boomed around the small front porch of the store.

 

“You’re in for a treat, really! Puttin’ up houses is our favorite business round here.”

 

* * *

 

And so they loaded into the Sheriff’s pick-up, the three of them lounging like teenagers in the bed among four-by-fours and coffee cans of screws and stacks of shingles. They bumped along the road up into the hills, cowboy music spilling out of the cab. Their outer layers were heaped by a rusted tool box, and the wind fluttered the edge of Cas’ shirt, making it ripple over his back as he leaned on the side of the truck, watching the meadowland and trees scroll by, the sprays of yellow and white wildflowers nodding as they passed.

 

Sam’s eyes were closed in a moment of meditative quiet, mind settled by the steady chug of the engine, so he did not catch the way Dean reached out and scratched at the back of Cas’ head, how his fingers trailed down the back of Cas’ neck and down his spine. At the bottom his fingers splayed and smoothed back up, each vertebrae bumping under his palm. A hundred dips and valleys, the whole of the Ozarks displayed for him to touch, and other wonders, all the wonders of the world on one back.

 

They smoothed over Cas’ shoulders, marveling.

 

* * *

 

They crested some hill and Earl Jones slowed the pickup to a lurching stop, brakes screaming. Men a little ways off in the distance looked up, mopping their faces and lifting their hands.

 

"Well, there she is!" the sheriff said, hauling himself out of the truck. He had scrapped his uniform and hung it in the backseat in favor of a work shirt and threadbare jeans, unconcerned with being off duty. As far as anyone was concerned, the busted Coke machine was the greatest threat of the day and it had already been conquered before lunchtime.

 

"Gotta raise up one more wall today and start sheetrockin' the rest, but she's a mighty fine lookin' house, ain't she?" The sheriff smiled, tamping his boot on the dirt, adjusting his heel.

 

The three hunters had climbed out of the truck bed and stood looking up at it - a naked frame swarming with people. The air whirred with the sound of machinery, the heavy slams of hammering, the wailing shriek of chop saws and the drone of generators and whines of screws.

 

"Why don't you just hire a contractor?" Sam asked, taking in the hive of individuals working diligently on all surfaces of the building.

 

"Oh, can't trust a contractor. Not if you want an honest house," Jones chuckled. "No, this house has to hold up to everything, and you can't trust a contractor for that."

 

"Is this house a gift? You said it was for newlyweds," Castiel said, sizing the structure from afar. He watched a man measure the cut out space of a window on a wall that had already been put up. It was a compact floor plan, not the wild sprawl of the house on the ridge. This was a modest little framework, mapped by close rooms and intimate spaces.

 

"Well, a good house is more of a necessary in these parts. It's tradition that we help out with things like this. Every house here is built by us. That's the only way you know it'll hold up. Gotta put your own sweat in it, work for it. But, I suppose, yes, if you want to call it a gift, it is one. But it'll be a gift that helps us all, I figure. If they've got a strong house they've got a good chance of being strong in all the other ways that count. Buildin' a house, buildin' a marriage, buildin' a town, it's all the same."

 

"But how do you know it's up to code?" Sam said. "State inspections and everything?"

 

"Trust me, son," Earl said, laughing. "You know when a house is right. Don't need the state to tell you that."

 

They had been gathering curious looks for some time, but the first to venture closer was a dark man who smiled broadly at the sheriff, clapping him on the shoulder.

 

"Well, who are these, Sheriff?" he said, tucking a handkerchief into the pocket of his shirt,

measuring Dean and Sam and Castiel in turn. "What young blood you bringin' me?"

 

"Oh, they were just passing through and had a bit of a spill at the store. Insisted on coming up here to prove to Peggy they weren't going to cause any trouble," Jones explained. "This here would be the foreman of our operation if we had one," he said, as an aside to the other three.

 

The man nodded, pursing his lips.

 

"Well, as long as they can work, it don't bother me a lick." He smiled, teeth bright white, and wiped his hand briskly on his pants before holding it out. "Name's Drum. Noah Drum. How do you do, how do you do."

 

They shook with him and Jones tittered.

 

"Well Drum, what're they good for?"

 

Drum had paused on Dean, scrutinizing him.

 

"You know how to throw your weight well?"

 

"Well enough," Dean said, hand still caught in the darker one's grip.

 

"Good, good. You got a low look about you," he said sagely, the lines on his face crinkling in a pleasant way.

 

"Low?" Dean grumbled in response to the analysis.   
  


"You got a good stance, know how to keep your feet planted. That'll help when we're puttin' up that wall. As for you and you—" He looked at Sam and Castiel with interest. "I'd say sheet rock for the tall one and you wouldn't be too hard pressed to help Frank over there finish settin' those windows."

 

Castiel retreated under the black man's kind-eyed stare.

 

"I - I don't have much experience," he started quietly, embarrassed.

 

"Well, you got hands, don't you?"

 

Castiel clenched his fingers uncertainly. Drum smiled.

 

"You got all you need, then. And if not, plenty of folks to lend a pair or a finger or two!"

 

He laughed loudly and the sheriff chuckled, as if it were some private joke.

 

In the moment of distraction, Dean caught Cas' wrist and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

 

 

* * *

 

Drum hadn't wasted time. He pointed Sam in one direction and Castiel in the other, and then gestured Dean along, over to where a small cluster of red-faced men were chatting and adjusting long ropes on the ground. Before them lay the two-story wall, frame nestled among the grass.

 

Dean frowned, already rethinking the job he'd been assigned. He didn't find himself particularly strong; he didn't know what it was that the man had seen in him that suited him more for this than something else. If anything, Sam would probably have been the better choice if they were going in terms of muscle.

 

"I reckon you've never done somethin' like this in such an old fashioned way," Drum commented, gazing down at the wall.

 

"No," Dean sighed, wiping the sweat already gathering on his brow.

 

"Well, there isn't too much science to it. We're gonna haul it up using those ropes, and two of em' will push it up and keep it steady, and then once it's up we'll hold the lines taught so they can set it. Now, the initial pull ain't hard. That's nothing because you're movin', but keepin' that line is the tougher part. Maintaining everything so that it's square and don't shift."

 

"What kind of wood is it?"  
  


"Cedar. She wanted hardwood, but you gotta have some give."

 

"Cedar's good," Dean commented. It didn't matter, though; the size of the wall alone meant a daunting weight, regardless of what it was made out of. Drum nodded and clapped his hands together, gaining the attention of the rest of the group. They walked around the perimeter of the house after checking the ropes, and went round to the other side where they were laid straight out on the ground, snaking through the naked beams.

 

"Now, you gotta place that weight of yours, put it all in your legs, alright? Not your back. You put it in your back you'll throw it all out. You just walk with the rest of us and settle it all in your feet and you'll be fine. When we hold you plant em', alright? Don't let it move you for nothing."

 

Dean nodded nervously, tugging on the gloves that Drum had tossed him, flexing his fingers. The anxiety of disappointing them settled in his stomach and he tried to shake it off, _man up_. The rope felt heavy in his hands, and he tested his grip on it, adjusting his hands. He closed his eyes against the bright sun and attempted to focus.

 

They'd toe-nailed the bottom of the wall to the already standing posts, but these would have to be knocked out and a jack would be kicked under it to raise the wall up a few inches into place so the anchor bolts could be drilled in. This was perhaps the trickiest part—exchanging the weight to the jack while keeping the wall square. There was a lot relying on the ten men—five on each side of the wall—to brace it.

 

"Alright!" Drum shouted, and Dean squared his shoulders, thought about keeping low. Keeping firm.

 

Someone called _ready_ on the other side, and Dean took a deep breath; the slack rope trailing on the ground in front of him began to move, and Dean pulled. The counterweight made his forearms burn, but Drum was calling encouragements and he could see the wall starting to come up a little, watched it waver a few inches off the ground as he and the other men arranged themselves. He walked back in step with the others in his periphery, gritting his teeth and digging the heels of his boots into the packed ground, and the wall came up with every step, wood creaking.

 

He channeled his weight down, to his legs, could feel it like a slow creep dropping down to his feet, down into the ground, solid. The wall was swinging up and the men on the other side were waiting with their slack lines ready to pull it into position. It was heavy as a bitch—but Dean wasn't thinking about the weight of the wall; he was thinking about his own. He was lost in the positioning of his own form, the tension of his arms and of his leg, the weight so deep he might have grown straight into the ground.

 

Drum called for the hold.

 

Dean heard the hurry of the jack being positioned and became immobile, leaning back into the rope, working with the pull, not against it.

 

For that long drawn out moment he was immovable. Nothing would have swayed him from that line: planted deep, every ounce of him settled and unwilling to budge. He might as well have been a cedar post, or an anchor bolt—he might as well have been a house himself. In his head was no thought, no tension, no worry.

 

Buried in his task was a peace, an inviting silence. Nothing thrashed or trembled; nothing rolled or kicked. There were only his feet on the ground and the exact knowledge of where he was in that firm moment. The world may have shifted around him, may have thrown the wind against him, but he would have stood.

 

Like nothing, it was done. He released the rope, stared up at the wall, lost, arms feeling loose as they swung at his sides.

 

"Excellent, son, excellent. You got that momentum? You got that blood still going?" Drum said, chest heaving, coming from what seemed like nowhere. In the snap of the smoky blue quiet that had been rushing through Dean's ears his mind opened up, stretching out and filling in the gaps beyond his body.

 

"What next?" he said without thinking, and Drum clapped him on the back.

 

"Gotta get them trusses up. Gonna ramp it and then bring em' up."

 

They were already setting the two by fours for the ramp against the wall. Like a bottle hastily uncorked his strength flooded back through him, adrenaline racing in his veins. He had not disappointed. He had accomplished and succeeded.

 

"Make you feel like a man, don't it?" Drum said quietly, and Dean looked at him. The old man smiled crookedly, his sinewy muscles flexing as he shook his arms out. "Makes you remember all two hands can do."

 

Dean stared at his gloved palms.

 

The last time he had looked at them so closely had been with disgust, but here, he could feel the shake of his fingers, the rush of blood through them, the thrill of power in them. They trembled with some raw energy.

 

He had never in his whole life felt so undoubtedly human; suddenly he was counted among the stoic ancestors that he shared with the man beside him. Men over all ages, raising walls and planting themselves deep as trees into the earth, their spirits unmoved by flood and storm and wind. Pioneers who would not be uprooted by rushing tides, those refusing to be broken by the whirlpools and swirling torrents of swollen riverbanks, these mighty souls in sound frames. Here was the secret to their unyielding: not in the sturdiness of the house but the hands that had formed it. That was the true strength; this was the honesty that would stand up to all things.

 

It was startling and rare to remember his own hands and think they might have fit the same place as those of the past. These hands were aligned with others, palms matching. Hands that had struggled against famine or flood and pushed on, learned to throw their weight as he had. These low-built ones like him who had put their shoulders to the wind and dared it to blow. The feeble fish, the base creature that had slithered from the waves and tied itself to the land had risen to meet the eyes of some far heaven.

 

These men who could build honest houses because they had become them.

 

Strong cedar houses that would impress that brilliant light and court it into their empty windows.

 

* * *

 

Castiel spent the time holding things for the man he had been assigned to. The gentleman was kind enough to understand that Castiel would be of little help without being taught, and had mandated him as his assistant of sorts. He held the tape measure and pressed his weight down on wood to be cut so it would not snap and caught the split pieces, tossing them into the scrap pile.

 

When asked if he would like to try himself, he declined, sanding down a rough corner on what would eventually take form as a windowsill instead. He was content to do the monotonous little task while the others milled around him. It was nice to feel useful in a small way. Unobtrusive.

 

Besides, watching Dean had always been his favorite pastime.

 

He watched the hunter from the far corner of the house, doing his odd jobs. He had watched Dean hesitate at first, known from the slope of his posture that he was anxious, probably doubting his own performance, but as soon as the rope had been in his hand, as soon as he'd let himself give in to the challenge, he had been spectacular.

 

Castiel had been rendered a bit useless by the sight of him: the flex of his shoulders and arms, the slight torque of his waist as he turned into the pull, the wall rising up from the soft earth. His eyes trailed over his chest, his legs, his thighs, the wrinkle of his jeans at the front, and back up again to the curve of his biceps, the steeps of his neck, the square lines of his jaw, slightly tightened in concentration.

 

Divine. There was no other word for it. Even without Cas' bias, Dean had always been an outstanding representation of his kind. Now it was illuminated even more than ever in the easy motions he made: the glide of his muscles under his skin as they worked, his stance, his confident steps. Once the wall had been erected, Dean had clamored for another opportunity to help, and Cas smiled, glad that he had found some kind of respite from the activity, a reprieve from the other stressful thoughts that had been swimming around in their heads for weeks.

 

Castiel wished he could understand toil the way humans did. The satisfaction of it, the pleasant weariness that came from it. The stubborn breed, always bent on doing for themselves, the wily younger sibling of his own species. In some unremembered time before Dean, Castiel had loved to examine their creations, the trifles and trinkets they produced. The tools they made to sustain themselves, many, like his dear, dear, Sam, asking so little of the Almighty in return.

 

But Dean had asked of him. Many things, unspoken and not.

 

Once it might have disturbed Castiel to be singled out, to have so much expected of him, but not anymore. Dean had asked of him, and this was not a privilege extended to many, and as his friend, as his rescuer, as his protector at times, Castiel had always given what he could.

 

Now, he was learning how to give as a lover. The word rolled around in his mouth, saccharine. It clicked against his teeth, like the girl's tic-tac had at the motel, a pleasant sensation. Not much by way of physical intimacy, yet, he reminded himself with a brief flinch, but he tried not to be discouraged.

 

There were ways he could accommodate for what that dreadful encounter had left to be desired. When Dean was tired, when he was spent, he would be there. When he laughed or cried and doubted. He'd be there. All he had to do was ask. The rest would simply have to fall into place on its own time. It would. They'd figure it out.

 

There was a break in the work, and Cas studied Dean as he drank from a bottle of water someone had offered him, rolling his shoulders and his neck. He was engaged in meaningless conversation with the person, nodding along to some observation and looking up at the house. He pointed to one of the trusses and made a motion to mimic the joint of it to the house, and the other man agreed.

 

The sunlight seemed drawn to where he stood, and later he would see the places where it had bathed his face in freckles, as though it had bent to chastely kiss him everywhere, leaving the gold-smudged flecks as parting gifts. Dean laughed lightly, made some shy joke, and the man laughed as well.

 

Castiel had not been so proud since he had first reached him in Hell. Those burnt years in the torturous bowels of the Pit, when he had first seen the whites of Dean's eyes among the slick and refuse, when he had shon his light down into the depths, the cracks and caverns, and watched the damned scatter and shrink from him. Castiel had reached out to collect him, to draw him up, never guessing this is where they would be. He and this man. This same broad, fine man he watched now, conversing in the afternoon sun.

 

His lover, as tall and honest as any house might be.

 

He smiled, ducked his head, sheltered the joy unfolding in his chest, holding it close, afraid he might lose it if he let it go.

 

"Hey!"

 

Castiel jerked towards the sound of Dean's voice to find him crouching down before him where he sat on a milk crate, sanding some piece of wood they had handed him.

 

"You okay?" Dean asked, forearms resting on his knees. His hair drooped over his forehead and he was flushed from laboring.

 

Cas stared at his face, open and excited.

 

"Yes," he said, after a moment, and Dean beamed at him.

 

"They need me to go down there and get some gas for one of the generators - just down there in that shed at the bottom of the hill."

 

"Do you need me to help you?"

 

"Nah, I got it," Dean said lightly, leaning forward into Cas' space a little. Cas' legs opened a little to him and Dean breathed deeply, evenly. "You seen Sam?"

 

"Yes. He was helping with something inside. Dry wall. He was covered in dust."

 

"I can imagine," Dean said, laughing.

 

"You looked comfortable out there," Cas said quietly, once the image had faded from his mind.

 

"So you _were_ checkin' me out," Dean drawled, tipping his chin up to look at his angel better.

 

"You looked like you were enjoying yourself, or is that too bold of me to say?" Cas smiled. "Very at ease."

 

"You like what you see?" Dean joked, but Castiel suddenly touched his shoulders, dragging his hands down Dean's damp chest.

 

"I love it, actually," he said, and Dean's laughter cut off when Cas bent down and brushed their lips together, fingers coming to rest on Dean's face.

 

"I adore it," he whispered, against the sweet mouth, and a shiver rattled down Dean's spine. Castiel kissed him again and pulled back with a slight tug on his lower lip, raking Dean's hair out of his forehead, the man pushing up into the palm of his hand, nudging into the touch.

 

"Winchester!"

 

Dean stiffened and turned over his shoulder to see Drum motioning at him.

 

“We need more gas or we can't start puttin' the sidin' up!"

 

Castiel smiled and kissed his temple, letting him go. Dean stood and brushed the grass off of his knees.

 

"You heard him," Castiel said, and Dean returned his attention to the angel and his coy smirk. "Later. I'm not done with you yet."

 

"I'm holding you to it," Dean said, teasing, pushing him slightly and turning in the direction of the hill and the shed and the laundry line.

 

* * *

 

The shed was everything Dean expected it to be: dark and musty and quiet. The sound of the tools was muffled by the thin walls and the distance, and he dodged cobwebs, stepping around the overturned wheelbarrow and rusted tools to find the red canister of gas Drum had promised was in there somewhere.

 

After winding a path to the back of the shed, he finally found it and hefted it—gasoline sloshed inside. Turning back, Dean's eyes roamed in the filmy light. Perhaps it was habit, but his gaze strayed to the rickety bookshelves and an old hutch desk pressed up against one of the walls. Interested, he set the gas tank down again near his feet and went towards them, seeing whatever there was to see.

 

There were plenty of books, but their titles were worn down with dust and age and unreadable, even when Dean swiped his grimy hand across them. He looked to the desk next, lifting up some of the scattered papers, nosing through the bills and receipts crammed in the cubbies. A spider scuttled out of the way and he followed it to the knob of a small drawer with a keyhole positioned right below.

 

He tested it, and it wasn't locked, so he slowly jiggled it open, the sides scraping around; it probably hadn't been opened in years.

 

There was nothing really in it. Just more papers, but Dean lifted these out of the way and felt around and the pads of his fingers butted against the familiar sensation of leather. Wedging his hand in, he pulled the book from where it was jammed against the back of the drawer, sliding it out onto the desk.

 

Its cover was blank, and it was clearly ancient, loosely bound in leather cord to hold it together and huge yellow patches of discoloration from water damage.

 

There were several other strips of paper sticking up from it too, and when he turned the top of the book towards him he could see that they were envelopes. Letters, most likely. Or just more bills.

 

He thought, for a brief moment, of what bad mojo could be hiding within the pages, but it seemed harmless. It didn't look witchy, but he scoured it anyway. He was sweeping his eyes over the back bottom edge when his thumb brushed against a slight dent on the spine. He flipped it closer to look and his heart leapt into his throat.

 

The same crescent catfish and stars that had been etched into Mattie Lawrence's door frame.

 

He frantically undid the cord and the book fell open in his hands, pages fluttering. His eyes pored over the front page and then his expression darkened.

 

There was nothing denoting Amos Porter there - just elaborate handwriting declaring that it was the journal of one Winston Maxwell, to be returned to him in Chicago if it were ever found.

 

"Chicago?" Dean muttered to the silent shed. "What the hell is this doing in Missouri if he was in Chicago?"

 

He flipped past this title page and scanned the flowery script. Miraculously, much of it was readable despite the heavy water damage on the front.

 

"' _My Emily, I have landed safely in Galilee_ —'"

 

Dean stopped reading for a second, his eyes widening.

 

"— _I have landed safely in Galilee and am looking forward to following the ore down to New Orleans. This assignment is already exciting and I am so glad that I was selected, though I miss you very much. I miss you dreadfully, my precious Em..._ ' Yada yada, okay, buddy, get to the good stuff.” Dean scrolled his finger down the page, searching for words that might leap out at him.

 

“' _...there are quite a few strange folks on this river boat. You would find them all very charming, I think, especially one of the oarsmen that I have become acquainted with. There is also a rather eccentric minister aboard, or so Jack (the oarsman) tells me. Perhaps I shall dine with him._..'"

 

Dean's muttered reading dropped off.

 

"Holy shit," he whispered, unable to believe what he was reading.

 

"'... _for to dine with the notable Amos Porter is apparently quite the honor_.'"

 

 

* * *

 

Sam frowned when he saw Dean hustling up the hillside, lugging the canister of gas and looking ready to split his skin.

 

"Is Dean okay?" he asked, and Cas turned to follow Sam's line of vision.

 

Dean caught his stare and held it as he came up on the unfinished house. He barreled to them and dropped the tank at his feet.

 

"You're never going to believe what I found poking around in that shed," he whispered, drawing closer so as not to attract attention. Sam took a bite of the sandwich he remembered he was holding and stooped down to look at what his brother was pulling out of his pocket. A slim, yellowed book.

 

"Is that—?!" Sam immediately exclaimed, and Dean shushed him, handing it over.

 

"No, but it's the next best thing. It's a journal from some dude who was _on the boat_ with Porter. The whole thing is written as a letter to his wife or something, but he was freaking _on the same ship_ as him for like two weeks!"

 

"Dean, where did you find this?" Castiel whispered, staring at the book with apprehension.

 

"In a desk they had stowed in there. I wasn't even looking for it, I was just being nosy, and there it freaking is, just lying in this drawer..."

 

"Dean." Sam shook his head, scanning page after page. "Dean, this is—this is a _goldmine_ , you understand that, right? I mean, there's just page after page of these accounts of these Riverlander stories..."

 

"Do you think it has the location of Porter's book in there?"

 

"I don't know, but I need to get back and really look at this thing," Sam said breathlessly. He was already losing himself in it.

 

"Yeah, yeah," Dean said, features hardening. He glanced around at the milling men, leaning over the book in Sam's hands as if to shield it from their eyes. "Yeah, we gotta get out of here."

 

Castiel sighed, looking up at the house instead.

 

 

* * *

 

They managed to slip away from the workers in a lull between the rearranging of tasks, and made their way back down the slopes to the highway, quiet and curving through the steep peaks. Sam kept the river journal tucked under his jacket and his brother and Castiel dawdled close to him, as if protecting it from any prying looks or wayward glances.

 

Once they were out of sight and hadn't been missed they waited in the high heat until a car came rattling down the road, and Dean smooth-talked a ride for them out of the nervous-looking old man who was driving.

 

All the way out of the hills Cas looked out the back window at the house hidden among the rises.

 

Soon enough they were back in town on the quiet streets, and Sam was fumbling with his room key while Dean held the journal in his hands, staring at it like it was going to bite him. They crowded into the dusty single and Cas moved to pull the shades open, coughing in the flurry of mites that sprang up when he did.

 

“Okay—so,” Sam said, immediately sitting down on the stiff mattress of his bed and taking the journal from Dean, “from what I can see...it's only about half-filled. The last bunch of pages are empty. So I can—read through most of it, try to see why it ended up here, maybe?” He looked up at Dean and Cas, waiting for approval; Cas nodded, and Dean simply stared at the leather-bound papers. “Maybe he'll mention Porter's book.”

 

“We can go find food,” Cas said, breaking in, seeing the look of apprehension on Dean's face. He seemed a little shell-shocked by the appearance of the journal—not what he'd been expecting to fall into his lap, here, of all places, and so easily. “And work out what to do next.”

 

Sam nodded, already lost in deciphering the scrawled handwriting, his finger trailing down the first of what must have been fifty or sixty pages filled to the margins with text.

 

* * *

 

The only place open was down the road, and the front counter—with a glass display case holding a myriad of pies that were probably made of plastic—was manned by a lazy-looking woman who told Dean and Castiel that they'd have to wait a while for a take-away order, and to have a seat if they wanted to wait. She was smoking a heavy cigarette and breathing the harsh smell in their faces with every word.

 

They sat down on the hard plastic bench that served as a waiting area, and Cas glanced sideways at Dean. The hunter's legs were jarring, bouncing up and down in excitement or agitation, it was impossible to tell. Quietly Cas slipped his hand across the space between them and let it rest on Dean's thigh.

 

“Man,” Dean said, shaking his head and looking off at the vintage advertisement on the wall opposite, “that journal had better have some damn good stuff in it.”

 

“Sam will find it if it does,” Cas said.

 

Dean smiled, wryly, to Cas' surprise—he hadn't seen that look on Dean's face since St Cloud, the look he had when he'd put two pieces of something together, or when wind of a hunt had blown their way.

 

“This is what I'm talking about,” Dean said. He didn't look at Cas—he spoke to the advertisement under the gentle distant clatter of cutlery in the kitchen. “Something big and solid we can sink our teeth into, y'know? This is good.” He pulled at his mouth and his legs kept jittering under Cas' touch. “Maybe it'll finally tell us if this whole shebang is another Apocalypse or just some big cosmic prank.”

 

“I think you know very well it's not another Apocalypse,” Cas said softly.

 

“Don't—” Dean looked at him, sharp, and Cas gently withdrew his hand from his leg. “Don't. Until we know for sure, I'm treating it like something big and bad. Because it's _always_ big and bad.”

 

Cas sighed, leaning back on the bench and tilting his head up to look at the mottled water-stained ceiling. “I just don't see how it _can_ be bad, when so much good's come out of it.”

 

“A couple freak harvests, some nice weather, that isn't much.”

 

“Us,” Cas said, a sigh. “ _We_ came out of it.”

 

He rolled his eyes to Dean to see him shift and fall quiet and look down, resigned. He had to admit that much was true.

 

 

* * *

 

Sam called them in a flurry of excitement as they were walking back, balancing white styrofoam boxes of greasy food in their arms. The town center was still deserted and dead and the sunset was painting the tops of the hills violet and orange.

 

“Okay, so get this—”

 

“Yeah?” Dean paused on the sidewalk to shuffle the box he was carrying into Cas' arms, the better to hold the phone. “We're almost back, what's up?”

 

“I flipped mostly to the end because everything else was pretty boring at first glance,” Sam said, a giddy sort of babble on the other end of the phone. “And then I ran the date of this guy's last entry against the timeline of this riverboat they were on, _The Elaine_ , and then against Chicago obituaries—this guy died in the same crash that killed Amos Porter.”

 

Dean groaned. “Oh, great. So he _doesn't_ have anything to say about the book?”

 

“Well—no.”

 

Dean rolled his eyes and set his jaw, and Cas slowed his pace. Frustration was setting thick into the lines of Dean's body, coiling under his skin like sinew or muscle.

 

“Hang on,” Dean said gruffly into the phone. “We're crossing the parking lot, be right back. You can tell us the bad news in person.”

 

He snapped his cell shut and stuffed it in his pocket.

 

When they got back to Sam's room, the lamps were on to cast off the falling night, and Sam was sitting cross-legged on his bed, for all the world a twelve-year-old reading a comic book. The journal was spread out on the comforter in front of him, all the envelopes and loose pages neatly stacked beside the leather covers.

 

Cas went about handing everyone their boxes, as if in gesture of peace, as Dean looked ready to rip the journal to shreds if it was as useless as Sam implied. Dean sank into the ancient, molding armchair in the corner beside the disconnected television and ran his hands over his face.

 

“So what've we got? Besides a steaming pile of jack-shit,” he said.

 

Sam and Cas exchanged wary glances.

 

“Well—like I said, his last entry—” Sam flipped to the last filled page of the journal, its edges wrinkled with water from a century and more ago. “—is dated the night before _The Elaine_ caught fire on the river and killed basically everyone on board. He apparently had dinner with Amos Porter a few times on the more prestigious decks, talks a lot here and there about Riverlander lore, those stars in people's hands, mostly. Not much else—but he does mention that Hymnal of Porter's at least once.”

 

At that, Dean sat up straighter, and Cas took a seat on the bed next to Sam, peering over his shoulder as he flipped back through the loose pages.

 

“Here. Uh—a few days before the crash. ' _Mr Porter does have a most singular item in his possession, a prayer book of sorts...by all accounts and from what I hear of his sermons, my dear Em, a joyous thing...predictions of a new age—where miracles follow the river as I do now, and where the hand of God...is clearly upon the world. There is talk...of a great wedding to come, and though I do not understand it I think it a lovely thing and I...will surely talk to him further...and write to you about it at next port._ '”

 

He looked up, at Cas' wide-eyed expression, and the incomprehensible look on Dean's face, his jaw set and his eyes hard.

 

“Sure sounds to me like that's what we're looking at,” Sam said, to fill the silence. “He—he never elaborates, but—miracles following the river. It's right here, practically straight from Porter's mouth, basically exactly what we've been following. And the wedding, whatever that is, whatever the Byrnes were talking about in Galilee.”

 

“Great.” Dean scrubbed at his face again, sighing. “But that still doesn't tell us where this thing _is._ And the only way I can think of to be sure if this stuff is leading up to something good or something bad is to have the thing, in my hands, and read it for myself.”

 

“Well, that's the other thing,” Sam said, gently closing the river journal. “They both died in the crash—right? But this guy was on a lower deck, and his journal survived, somehow. Ended up in a shed in the Ozarks. Porter would have been above him—his stuff might have been even more intact, so—if someone managed to get their hands on some poor chump's diary—”

 

“—then someone might have easily gotten hold of Porter's Hymnal,” Cas finished, quiet, trading looks with Sam.

 

“Exactly.”

 

“Okay,” Dean said, leaning forward, hands dangling between his knees. “Okay, but _who_? This was over a hundred years ago.”

 

Sam bit his lip.

 

“Well—”

 

“What?”

 

“It was a _massive_ wreck, Dean.”

 

“Yeah, I know. So?”

 

“So—someone had to collect all those souls.”

 

Dean blinked at him, his eyes dull in the lamplight.

 

“What—a reaper?”

 

“Well, yeah.” Sam unfolded his legs and carefully popped open his styrofoam box, plucking the slick plastic fork from the frankly disappointing salad inside. “If this book was really such a big deal on both sides of the veil, maybe something paranormal got wind of it, you know?”

 

“Summon a reaper,” Cas said, slowly. “Here.”

 

Sam nodded. “And ask it what it might know.”

 

Dean got up from his chair, began to pace—his own styrofoam box was sitting neglected atop the television.

 

“Reapers aren't exactly _friendly_ , y'know.”

 

“Well, Tessa—”

 

“And last time I checked, you had to be dead or dying to even see them.”

 

“Not if you're inhuman,” Cas said, speaking up almost to their surprise, sitting straighter on the bed. “I could see it. I have enough grace left for that, I think.”

 

Sam nodded, looking from the angel to Dean, who had settled against the TV cabinet and was pinching the bridge of his nose as if to stave off a headache.

 

“That's a hell of a shot in the dark,” he said, but it was a weak argument, and he knew it.

 

“This whole thing's been a shot in the dark,” Sam replied. “It can't hurt to try, and it's the best chance we've got.”

 

* * *

 

Dean could only imagine the face of the teenage girl at the front desk when she came in after they'd gone to clean up after them—opening the door to be confronted with the enormous Enochian sigil Castiel was busy painting on the flat and knobby carpet, symbols that sparked momentarily after he'd formed them and then settled back to the generic red of the spray can. A simple barrier to snag the reaper once it'd been summoned, and keep it from doing anything to harm them.

 

“You're sure about this?” Dean said, to Sam, whose arms were crossed, his eyes studying the

angel's work on the floor.

 

“D'you have any better ideas?”

 

Dean frowned. Much to his frustration, he really didn't.

 

“Okay.” Cas unfolded himself from the floor and placed the spray can on the television, smearing stray paint on his jeans. “That should hold long enough to talk to it.”

 

“Assuming it knows anything at all,” Dean grumbled.

 

Sam and Cas elected to ignore his cynicism for the moment. The sigil on the floor seemed to waver and undulate briefly before it settled into the carpet, and to look at it now felt solid, concrete.

 

Silently, under some mutual and unspoken instinct, the Winchesters moved off to the side to give Cas space. They'd decided Cas would say the spell, given that he'd be the only one to see the thing once it arrived, and it felt almost irreverent to intrude upon the proceedings.

 

Cas stood in front of the sigil and clenched his hands, open and shut, a few times. He took a breath.

 

“ _Messorum evoco qui me tetigit_ ,” he said, sharp and calm, infusing the spell with what grace he could muster.

 

It echoed strangely through the room at an unexpected pitch, a remnant perhaps of the angel's true voice, and both brothers took a step back as the lights over their heads sputtered and flashed. One or two of the bulbs popped and the room dipped down into cold.

 

Cas didn't say anything for a moment—Dean and Sam watched him, trying to read in his posture whether or not it had worked, but then he stood up a little straighter, as if coming to attention, and fixed his eyes on a spot on the wall at eye level.

 

“Reaper,” he said.

 

In the sigil on the floor, invisible to the humans but clearly visible to Castiel, was a man in a well-fitting black business suit, impeccably (unnaturally) tailored perfectly to him—lean, bordering on a handsome scrawniness, dark-haired and dark-eyed. A black cigarillo was caught between his lips as if he'd been pulled straight from the front walk of some Wall Street building on his smoking break.

 

The reaper paused a moment, realizing he had been summoned, that he was now where he hadn't been a moment ago; carefully his eyes shifted, drawing from Castiel's stoic face to the two Winchesters (who had no idea where to look) to the dusty, claustrophobic motel room, and finally to the painted symbols around his feet, anchoring him in place.

 

Calmly, he tamped a bit of ash from his cigarillo and met the angel's eyes.

 

“Well,” he said, in a voice like melted chocolate. “This is a surprise.”

 

Cas drew himself up. “We have some questions for you.”

 

“I was in the middle of a job, you know. Massive explosion in New Jersey. Really not a good time.” The reaper looked him up and down; he seemed unimpressed by what he saw. “Angel.”

 

“Castiel.”

 

“Corinthian. I've heard your name before.” The reaper took a drag on his cigarillo. “I can't say it's a pleasure to meet you.”

 

“Regardless,” Castiel said. “You may as well tell us what we want to know if you'd like to get out of that sigil, and get back to your work.”

 

Corinthian sighed. He tipped forward, examining the Enochian that bound him, cigarillo dangling from his fingers; he glanced sideways at the Winchesters, who had settled for focusing on Cas rather than empty air and silence.

 

“Questions,” he said, dark gaze slipping back to Castiel. “What kind of questions?”

 

“Do you know this area?”

 

“Haven't worked it in a few decades.”

 

“Ever work the river?”

 

The reaper smiled wryly. “Everyone's worked the river.”

 

“There was a riverboat crash,” Cas said. “In the 1800s. _The Elaine_.”

 

“There were a lot of riverboat crashes in the 1800s, angel.”

 

“Everyone on board was killed. But we're interested in one.” Cas picked up the river journal from the bed and held it up; the imprinted sigil of the star and the catfish caught the dim remaining light and he was not oblivious to the flicker of the reaper's eyes to it, the way his face went slightly pale. “Amos Porter.”

 

Corinthian observed the journal for a moment, sucking on his cigarillo almost anxiously now. Cas felt a little swell of triumph in his chest at the sight of it.

 

“The sooner you tell us what you know about him,” he said, “the sooner we'll let you go.”

 

The reaper sighed; he drained the life from his smoke in one long suck and it vanished into the air. He brushed the ash off on his suit.

 

“Amos Porter,” he said, carefully. “Rings a bell, I suppose.”

 

“He had a book on him when he died. The Riverlands Hymnal.”

 

Corinthian met his eyes again, from under his brow.

 

“What do an angel and two hunters want with that thing?”

 

“So you've heard of it.”

 

“Of course I've heard of it.” Corinthian sounded nervous, very nervous, now; his glance was shifting and he fidgeted inside the sigil.

 

“Do you know where it might be now?”

 

“Look—angel.” The reaper straightened his shoulders. “A word of friendly advice. You don't want anything to do with it.”

 

“Why is that?”

 

Corinthian huffed, rolling his eyes to the ceiling, as if he were fighting back the urge to spill. Finally, after a long tense moment of silence, in which Castiel could see him struggling with it, weighing his options, entirely aware of the fact that he was trapped, and that the only way he was getting out was if he were _let_ out, he ran a hand over his face.

 

“I was there,” he said, his voice a little hollow. “Me and one other, I don't remember her name. I think she may have died in your war. In any case—it was routine, it was normal. Easy pickings. And your preacher, this—Amos Porter—became my responsibility by chance.”

 

Cas nodded; he let his attention drift for just a moment to the Winchesters, but they were fixed on him, waiting for him to finish.

 

Corinthian plucked another cigarillo from thin air and lit it with a flick of wrist. Anxiously he took a drag before he continued.

 

“He wasn't quite dead when I arrived, but his clock was running out, and so I had to wait. Smoke inhalation, as I recall. He was clutching that book to his chest, the one you want.”

 

“What happened to the book?”

 

“Well.” Corinthian breathed out a black stream of smoke. “Very rarely—and not so much these days—sometimes we take...mementos. Very small things, you know, things that won't be missed.”

 

“ _You_ took the book?”

 

Dean and Sam straightened, exchanging glances.

 

“No,” Corinthian said, hastily, holding up a hand. “No—that is, I didn't have it for long.”

 

“Who took it from you?”

 

At this the reaper paused again, visibly wary to speak. Nerves were trembling in him.

 

“It wasn't taken,” he said. “It was— _given._ ”

 

“A name, reaper.”

 

“Death,” Corinthian said, a bit too hastily, a bit too fast. “It was Death. I gave the book to Death.”

 

Silence fell in which the reaper set his gaze on Cas, and all of Castiel's arrogance dissolved. He felt at once boneless, as if the floor had fallen out from under him.

 

_Death?_

 

“That's not possible,” he said, trying and failing to sound imperious again. “He wasn't walking the earth in those days.”

 

“Someone popped him loose long enough to collect that Hymnal from me,” Corinthian said, all at once entirely serious, any air of sarcasm gone. “Minutes at most. But it was definitely him. Something about that book was important.”

 

Cas swallowed hard. He tried not to let himself go weak in the knees—not in front of a creature like this, not in front of Sam. Not in front of Dean.

 

“Is that all?” Corinthian asked.

 

Cas blinked, regaining himself.

 

“Where did the book go?” he said, voice thick and shaken.

 

“I don't know,” the reaper said. “I'll swear on whatever god you like. Once it left my hands I never heard of it again.”

 

Cas nodded, dazed. For an instant longer he lingered, unsure what else to say, what else to make of what he was hearing, and then before he could stop himself he bent forward, ran a finger across the Enochian boundary. It sparked, a smoldering burn, and by the time he'd straightened Corinthian had vanished into the air.

 

Cas breathed. Absently he let the river journal drop back onto Sam's bed and then followed it, sitting down hard on the mattress.

 

Sam and Dean broke out of their reverie, suddenly, and moved perhaps a bit too hastily across the room to him. Dean took his shoulder, out of instinct more than anything else.

 

“You're shaking—”

 

“Cas, what did it say?” Sam crouched down to the angel's eye level, caught his hazy blue eyes. “Did it say what this is?”

 

“It's Death,” Cas murmured. “It's Death walking.”

 

The brothers stared at him, and then at each other. A chill fell that had nothing to do with the cold left in the wake of the reaper.

 

“That book was important enough— _huge_ enough—to send Death himself out into the world,” Cas said. All the warmth, all the happiness of that afternoon had been sucked out of the room and the air between the three of them like a drag on a cigarillo.

 

“Jesus Christ,” Dean murmured, letting his hand fall from the angel's shoulder. He leaned back on his haunches and stared at the corner of the mattress. “Jesus Christ.”

 

Cas swallowed thickly.

 

“That's—big.” Sam moved to sit next to him, slowly, covered his mouth with his steepled hands, as if in prayer. “That is—unfathomably big.”

 

“And if it's—Death.” Dean rubbed at his own mouth. “If it's Death—that _cannot_ be good.”

 

A long pause fell. It seemed as if the walls were caving in, as if something in one fell swoop had stolen away the road, and all of it—the upswing of it, the facts of the binder of miracles, of werewolves sustaining silver wounds, of old magic and old fairytales. As if it had all been torn down around them, any chance or hope of something beautiful finding them, finally, and all of Dean's apprehensions inflated, filling the room, squeezing the breath out of them.

 

All of Castiel's little reassurances, all of Sam's logic, blown away, and beneath it all the memory of bruises and bite marks rising and welling, all of the latent anxiety rising like blood to beaten flesh.

 

Death walking had undone it all.

 

“I was so sure,” Cas murmured, almost to himself. He bowed forward a little, arms loose and useless, hands boneless between his knees. “I was so sure it was good.”

 

 

* * *

 

Dean couldn't fall asleep.

 

They'd all gone their ways to their separate spaces soon after Corinthian had gone, unable to stand the uneasiness in Sam's room. None of them wanted to even imagine the morning. Dean had a feeling that no matter how bright and hot it rose it would feel cold on his skin.

 

Despite himself, he had wanted to indulge Castiel's optimism, all this time. And all of it had come crumbling down, just like that.

 

Just like it always did.

 

Cas had drifted off, somehow, beside him in the single bed, and was lying on his back, head tilted a little towards Dean on the pillow. But Dean couldn't manage it. He was a buzz of nerves, ready to burst out of his own skin, and his mouth was dry, and he couldn't help but feel his heart thudding in his chest, thrashing.

 

_Like some catfish._

 

He rolled out of bed, quietly, so as not to wake Cas. For a moment he sat on the edge of the mattress, holding his head in his hands. To make matters worse a headache was thudding in his temples. He need a stiff drink. Or just a drink.

 

Pulling down his rucked-up T-shirt, Dean got up, went into the tiny dingy bathroom, picked up the complementary plastic cup beside the blackened mirror. The tap water came out freezing cold against its thin surface and he threw back the entire cup in one go. It was like ice in his throat.

 

Dean sighed, leaned against the counter, let his head tip against the mirror. At least his heart was calming down.

 

He turned to go back into the room, back to bed and back to Cas—and stopped dead.

 

The plastic cup dangled in his fingers, spotted with water, in the doorway of the bathroom.

 

Castiel, asleep, peaceful and unmoving—but from his nose, from his mouth, a steady stream of what looked like smoke.

 

White and blue, and every shade of brightness in between. Coiling and seething, pulsing and pulling with the movement of his breath, clouding against his lips. And rising, rising upward like heat in winter, drifting into the air above his head. Curling, soft, soundless.

 

Grace.

 

Leaving his body in a gentle roil, casting the blue light back onto his face, and Dean in the doorway, Dean frozen in place, watching it go. Watching it burn and smolder silently from his lover's mouth, iridescent, like silky dust motes in their own glow, an ever-thinning surge.

 

Until finally—how much later, Dean could not have said—the last of it was gone, and it scattered like spent oxygen.

 

And Castiel slept on.

 

And Dean stood in the doorway, unable to move.

 

And breathless.


	8. Hartman, KY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Under tower and balcony,  
> by garden-wall and gallery,  
> a gleaming shape she floated by,  
> a corse between the houses high...  
> ...and round the prow they read her name:  
> The Lady of Shalott.”

Morning came, as Dean had predicted—cold and high.

 

He watched Cas as if at any moment he'd burst apart, unsure exactly what he'd witnessed in the small hours. If he'd dreamed it. But he knew he hadn't, and Cas weathered his anxious stares with a blank face.

 

A text from Sam pulled them out under the rusted portico into a mist that settled like spirit breath on the village, shrouding the hilltops. Bobby had called, asked them for a favor, a little distraction, if they could afford it. A case, a hunt, in a town called Hartman to the east.

 

Dean latched on as soon as Sam said the word _ghost_ ; his fingers itched to hold a gun and feel the roll of rock salt under their callouses. This, at least, was what he knew, what he could handle. Something routine. The old life.

 

Castiel said nothing, but followed them to the Impala anyway, fingers brushing over his sternum. He felt a little hollow inside.

 

In their mutual unease they left under cover of the mist and hardly spoke except to catch the exits on the highway. In their mutual unease they bunked up for the afternoon halfway, none of them in any state to drive, still. Still a little stomach-sick at the shock of what they'd heard the night before.

 

They settled in as best they could before the final stretch. Sam clicked through preliminary research on his laptop, an almost unfamiliar habit after all these weeks chasing something as nebulous as miracles and stories. Obituary text seemed strange to his eyes, now.

 

Another podunk motel without doubles. For the second time they parted ways after anxious hours and anxious meals and tried to remember how to breathe normally. It was as if a cloud had passed in front of the sun, perturbing.

 

 

* * *

 

The night howled. It prowled the bedside, snapping its frothing jaws, baiting them, the hungry night, admiring the meat of their bodies on the bed.

 

It nosed at the pillows and dragged its heavy paws along the sheets, leaving deep dents in the mattress and no soft spaces for their frantic limbs. It snarled at the treat before it, the slash of their red flesh, flushed full of blood; it had come in the witching hour, the haunted time before dawn, unexpected, uninvited, now, the black-furred darkness, blurring their forms, blinding them.

 

Dean swallowed Cas' cock whole, the head of it scraping the back of his throat. He gagged and choked and Cas moaned at the ugly sounds, the wet tight heat, opened his mouth wide to the heavy night, mimicking the taut circle of lips around his shaft.

 

Dean pulled off with a rough bump of teeth and bit hard at Cas' inner thigh before returning his attention to the spit-slicked cock in front of him.

 

Dean didn't know how it had started. Waking up in the inky dark that had purred around him, taunting the hardness between his legs, the leftovers of circulation and some snatch of a wet dream. The same stiff heat at his hip, and Castiel had rolled over, had groaned in sleepy frustration, and then they were facing each other, and then Dean was kissing him, was kissing him too hard for just waking up, and the shudder had torn through him again, pushing up his throat, wanting _in_. Climbing up from the deep dark of his body, climbing his ribs like a ladder, wanting to get _out_.

 

Cas mouthed at the empty air, head tossing on the mattress, Dean's fingers digging deep furrows down his thighs, clamoring up his sides. He arched, wanting to give more, more, more of him, all of him. _Take it all_ , he wanted to scream. _Take me._ Dean could have all of it, he could take anything he wanted. Dean, who was starving for him, and Cas' head swam with _take me_ , _swallow me up, all of me, everything._

 

Night stalked around them, licking its chops, drooling at the sight of them. They were hideous wounded things. Broken and vulnerable, ripe with blood and tender with bruises, feral as injured animals. It growled its sinister encouragements in their ears to carve and tear and _rip_.

 

Dean craved relief. The need swelled up in his head, occupying every thought.

 

He had no energy to fight off the brute hunger anymore. He made a strangled sound, filled his mouth with Cas again, searching for that momentary click of satisfaction, the thick weight of Cas on his tongue when he swallowed around him. It wasn't enough, it was over too soon, and he gave a muffled cry, and Cas echoed it; they fell to panting, and Dean crawled up his body, couldn't see what he was doing through the red haze of want.

 

Cas rutted up against him, beastly motions of his hips, shoving him over, then, flipping them both, and grinding down on top of him, fingers clawing at Dean's chest.

 

"Come on," Dean gasped, grabbing his hips, rocking him harder, cocks slipping together with every thrust. "Come on, come on, come _on_ ," over and over again, and Cas chafed against him, red skin raw. Dean gripped his thighs, pushed up against him, searching for that angle of pleasure, mad with frustration, with hurt and confusion.

 

With every movement he betrayed Cas.

 

He had promised him more than this. He had promised him better than this.

 

 _I have nothing to offer him._ It wailed in his ears over the sweaty clash of their bodies. Cas' fingers hooked, bent on digging him out of his skin. Cornered by the night, searching for the out, the exit, the safety. It had to be there. Cas curled down to suck at the column of Dean's throat, felt the hot pulse under his tongue.

 

He loved him; so why wasn't it enough? Why couldn't he give him what he needed? Dean writhed under him, he squirmed and twisted, gasped and heaved, and nothing Cas did alleviated it. Dean was exhausting himself; his eyes went dead with it, looking mindlessly at nothing.

 

Cas wanted to break first. He wanted to save Dean that at least; if anyone could have him, let it be Dean. Let Dean split him wide, let him cleave him in two, shatter him. "Please," Cas hissed, imploring, and Dean shook his head. "Fuck me, take me—"

 

"I can't," Dean rasped. "I can't—I'll hurt you."

 

It spilled out of him, and he shut his eyes, reached between them, fisted their cocks, beat wildly. He knew he wouldn't be able to control himself. The anger was already starting to seed in his stomach. He would not let it out on Cas. He would not hurt him like that.

 

Cas clutched at him in miserable pleasure, whined and whimpered, bucking into his hand. The syncopated jerks when they came, so close, but not quite. A sliver apart.

 

The night buried them.

 

Cas lifted off of him in one pathetic movement and staggered to the bathroom. His stomach lurched; he felt dizzy and slammed into the door-frame and barely felt it. He stumbled, tripped against the bathtub, unable to walk straight, his head swimming.

 

For a spotless second he barely knew where he was.

 

He was injured and graceless and alone. Terrified, he tried to find something to drown out the ache of shame, his sibling's songs, anything, but there was nothing in his head but his own voice. The thin whispers of his consciousness ringing around in his soft skull, rattling in the emptiness, too loud and jarring to him.

  
What they'd done. What _he'd_ done. Again—it had happened again. He'd let it happen again.

 

"Here, here—" Dean's jumbled voice, his hand grabbing the back of Cas' head, pushing him down into the toilet and suddenly he knew why. Cas retched, hands fisting the porcelain, and slid down, his legs no longer holding him up.

 

He stared at the tile, the sensation of a fever dream receding. Disoriented, he turned to see Dean slumped beside him.

 

Dean reached out, flushed the toilet and then pulled Cas towards him, his shaking hands too afraid to press down on the mottled skin. Cas, lost, gripped him hard, held him tightly, ignoring his body's protests and the bitter pain.

 

They found their way into the tub, somehow, the hot water shaking down on them. A tired attempt to cleanse the sadness.

 

Dean was limp as a ragdoll, head lolling against the tile wall, Cas against his chest. His hands scraped water from the fallen angel's dark hair over and over, slicking it against his forehead.

 

Hard water, filling the room with steam and warmth that couldn't soothe them all the way, the muddy taste dripping into Cas' mouth and washing out the acidic reminder of bile.

 

They said nothing.

 

What was there to say?

 

 

* * *

 

David Parsons was forty-five years old, and extremely tired. He had been tired since the moment he'd first laid hands on a silver knife, sixteen years before, and had slashed the throat of the thing wearing the stolen skin of his little sister. Certainly, he had managed to remember how to sleep nights; certainly, sometimes his dreams even bordered on pleasant. But for the most part he was a veritable insomniac—which, he supposed sometimes, worked in his favor, as the things whose spilled blood made his living tended toward the darker hours.

 

He'd kept count for the first ten years, kept a tally of his hunts in a tiny field notebook in his pocket, but after eleven years he'd lost the heart. Therefore he had no idea where the ghost in Hartman, Kentucky fell in his ledger, but he knew the number was higher than he'd have ever liked.

 

It had become clear to him upon arriving in the tiny town, sitting right above a tributary of the Mississippi, and interviewing the local brass and examining the bloated, weed-wrapped bodies in the morgue, that this job was far more difficult than he'd anticipated, and that he—being a very tired man—was desperately in need of some backup.

 

One call to Bobby Singer in South Dakota and a little sliver of good fortune had delivered him the news of three hunters across the river who'd be coming his way to help him out, and now he was languishing in a dark and smoky corner of the only bar in town, nursing the same whiskey he'd been nursing all night, too damn exhausted to get into the drink with any passion, waiting for the infamous Winchesters and their equally infamous angel to arrive.

 

As he waited he pulled the facts of the case through his sluggish mind: one Sandra Eadie, dead these past fifty-eight years come November, having re-emerged in the spiritual sense from the muck and mire of her riverbed grave, now drawing what seemed like random victims down to the bottom of the water with her. David had wrung dry the town archives, newspapers, local lore, all of it, and had found nothing of note, no motive that could point to why she chose the ones she chose, or where exactly her body lay. And he was so awfully and incredibly tired. He hoped fresh eyes could help him see the light at the end of the tunnel.

 

No sooner had he decided to give his drink another go than the door to the bar opened, and by habit he turned to see if the new arrivals were the ones he was waiting for. Three of them—he supposed it must have been, then—and he sat up a little straighter, pulled at his collar, ran a hand over his drawn and weathered face.

 

The shortest of the three (the angel, he supposed—though he didn't look too glorious and mighty under the height of the other two) caught his glance, and David raised a hand in greeting, and the angel gently tugged on his tallest companion's sleeve. Nonchalantly the three hunters made their way to him in his four-chair table in the corner and took the remaining seats without much more ado.

 

“David Parsons?” the tallest one asked.

 

“The man himself,” David replied, his voice a gruff drawl and thick with drink. He stuck out a bony hand to them across the sticky table. “You're the hunters Bobby sent over, I'm assumin'.”

 

“Sam Winchester,” the tallest one said, taking his hand and shaking it briefly. “This is my brother Dean—” He gestured to the one of middling height, who raised his eyebrows by way of greeting— “And this is Castiel.”

 

“Ain't you the angel?” David said, peering at the skinny blue-eyed man sitting to his left.

 

Cas blinked, slowly, and smiled a little, a sad sort of smile.

 

“Not anymore, I don't think,” he said, and David could sense a touchy subject when he saw one, and didn't press the matter further.

 

In the brief awkward pause that followed he examined all of them, trying to decipher the cause for the tension that was clogging up the air between them. The angel Castiel looked like he'd been kicked, all turned-in shoulders and bowed neck; Dean had what looked suspiciously like a very painful hickey on his neck, below his jaw; Sam looked the least beaten of the three, but even he had an anxious look about him, clearly uncomfortable between his brother and companion. He was the buffer. The dam.

 

Carefully David took a drink and fixed them with his gaze. “Bobby tell y'all anythin' about this case?”

 

“Just that we were needed,” Sam said.

 

“Got nothin' of your own on?”

 

The three of them exchanged glances, and Dean cleared his throat.

 

“Needed a break from what we've got on,” he said, voice rough. “Something a little more routine.”

 

David raised a brow. “Somethin' out of the ordinary over in the, uh. Ozarks? Where y'all been?”

 

“Let's—just focus on the task at hand,” Sam said, leaning forward a little. Taking control of the conversation, David thought. Diffusing the tension. “What kind of info do you have to start off?”

 

David clicked his tongue, resigned. “Ain't much.” He knocked back the rest of his whiskey in one, too worn out to care about making it last. “Ghost. Drowned, as far as I can tell. Name of Sandra Eadie, judgin' from the obits and the area. From about the fifties, I'd say. Ain't got nothin' big by way of backstory, not too many records kept around here, not sure why she drowned. All I got is about four bodies in the morgue downtown, all of 'em drowned, all of 'em, _at this time,_ accidental, by the coroner's reckonin', 'cept I ain't so sure.”

 

“What makes you so sure they're not accidental?”

 

“Ectoplasm,” David said. “Under their fingernails, every one of 'em. Like they was fightin' the grip of somethin' pullin' 'em in. Only one witness, says she saw a woman standin' in the current just before her boyfriend wandered out and under the water.”

 

“Good enough for me,” Dean said, more of a grunt than anything else.

 

“Listen, only reason I called for help was that this thing is strong,” David said. “It ain't some dilly-dallyin' shy thing been around for centuries, blow it over with a good breath. Far as ghosts are concerned this girl is fresh out of the bottle and lookin' for blood, and I—well, I ain't prideful. I ain't so good at holdin' my own in the field no more. You boys are doin' me a hell of a favor.”

 

“Don't mention it,” Cas said. David was surprised, for the second time, to hear him sound so meek. He wondered what had happened to him. To all of them.

 

He swallowed, the harsh afterburn of whiskey still lingering in his throat.

 

“You boys alright?” he said, cautious.

 

They all looked at him, all three, with hard eyes.

 

“We can do our job,” Sam said. “That's all that matters.”

 

* * *

 

They left the bar soon after, having arranged what small details David had to offer. He'd directed them to a chain motel on the other side of town and raised a tired hand in farewell, and they'd left him looking into his empty glass as if searching for any hazy alcohol he may have missed.

 

Sam was relieved beyond belief to see that they had double rooms available. Partially because it was a hassle to coordinate people in separate places in mornings and evenings, but mostly because he was worried about his brother and Castiel.

 

They'd come out of their room in the last nameless town between the Ozarks and Hartman bruised and beaten just as badly as in Le Beau, and looking sour and put out with one another. Sam hadn't asked—he hadn't needed to ask.

 

He was glad, then, that they'd be sleeping across the room from him tonight. He hoped that, maybe, with a third party present, they wouldn't stew in their frustration with each other, and with the situation at hand. Everything had gone so dull and dreary after the summoning of the reaper and it seemed that none of them knew what to make of it, and it was pulling all of their moods down with it.

 

He made a point of watching them out of the corner of his eye as they bunked up for the night, as he was looking up Sandra Eadie in the county records on the futzy wireless connection. They were moving in wide arcs around each other, tight-lipped, giving each other hard looks. They didn't even try to touch each other, and this, especially, was odd to Sam—over those past few weeks he'd gotten used to seeing them brush their hands against each other, lean into one another, kiss and caress, but now they seemed afraid to do so. Or too angry to do so.

 

The silence was becoming deafening. He wished to God they'd say _something_ , if only to save him the awkwardness of breaking the quiet himself. Even if they were yelling at each other, at least it would have been noise.

 

But he didn't speak up, and they didn't speak up, either. When they went to bed—early, so as to get a fresh start on Sandra Eadie's ghost in the daylight—Sam took his time rearranging the too-hard pillows, watching them. Dean and Cas climbed into bed and didn't kiss goodnight, didn't touch, hardly even looked at one another—lay down and turned their backs, Dean facing Sam, Cas facing the wall, their bodies curled in tight against themselves. Almost as if they were afraid of any contact between their skin.

 

 

* * *

 

They met up with David the next morning for breakfast in a hole-in-the-wall cafe, hardly big enough to hold even their small party. He looked, if it were possible, even more tired in the early morning light than he had under the dull shadows of the bar.

 

It was quickly becoming the most jilted and unrelaxing hunt Sam had ever experienced. Between David Parsons—who looked like he was on the edge of falling asleep near-constantly—and Dean and Cas, who looked absolutely frigid, and seemed to have forgotten how to speak to each other, he was feeling more and more like the only person with priorities.

 

“Right,” he said, once they'd all properly gotten a start in on their food. Taking control of the situation; it wasn't a position he particularly liked. “I think we'd like to get a look at the bodies, and—maybe start digging into this Sandra woman's past? Maybe suss out a reason why she picks the people she does so we can keep her from grabbing anyone else. Predict where to put her down.”

 

Dean cleared his throat. “I'll go to the morgue.” He picked at the corner of his napkin and gave Sam and Cas a sideways glance. “You two can go do your research thing, you're better at it anyway.”

 

Cas growled something unintelligible under his breath and Dean stiffened.

 

“What was that?” he said sharply.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Cas bit out, throwing his fork down onto his plate, chair squealing as he pushed back from the table. “Can we go?” He stared at Sam, his voice venomous. “I don’t want to inconvenience your brother anymore.”

 

“Are we really gonna do this right now?” Dean hissed. Cas refused to answer, glaring at Sam before standing abruptly and walking away.

 

Dean sat in stunned silence while he watched Cas push the café door open with a bang and step out on the sidewalk.

 

“Yeah, so,” Sam said, clearing his throat and shaking off the shock of Cas walking out. He got up, and tossed his fuming brother a halfhearted shrug before striding after Cas, nearly knocking a waitress over.

 

“Un-fucking-believable,” Dean ground out, rubbing his face. He should have shaved that morning, but he was so wound up he had totally forgotten about it. He didn’t bother to look at David. He didn’t want his pity or his mopey stare.

 

He’d have been surprised to know the other hunter was doing neither. He was drinking his coffee and looking out the window, lost in thought. He’d checked out of the table conversation the moment the angel – former angel – had started bristling. It was helpful trick he’d learned from years of lonely living.

 

“Well, I better step,” the grizzled older man said, not moving at all. He seemed caught, still looking out the window. “You ought to, too.”

 

Dean wordlessly left, and David sighed.

 

God _damn,_ he was tired.

 

* * *

 

 

Castiel wanted to hit something, and he wanted to hit it hard. He wanted it to hurt as bad as he did, to absorb every ounce of the defeat he felt.

 

He was furious: furious that he was human, furious that he had to _walk_ out of the cafe instead of flying, furious that Dean would hardly look at him, that he dismissed him, that he hadn't wanted a single thing to do with him since the debacle of their last attempt at intimacy.

 

They had gone back to bed holding each other, that night, but Dean had woken up first the next morning, his shame and worry having crystallized into anger in the dark, and had pretended Cas wasn't there ever since.

 

Angry, with himself and with Dean, Cas had refused to break first, and so they'd worked themselves into respective corners of stubborn silence, bristling and licking their wounds, unwilling to even approach each other.

 

Heat prickled at the back of his eyes and he took a short, gasping breath. He would not cry. He bit at the inside of his cheek. Damn humanity. Damn the nauseating swirl of emotions in his gut. There was nothing enviable about this. It was crude and useless.

 

He heard Sam come out of the cafe and continued to face the street, fists balled tight at his sides.

 

"Don't," he said darkly when Sam put out a hand, ready to place it on his shoulder. "I don't want to be coddled."

 

"I wasn't..." Sam started, and then stopped, taking a moment to pause, coming to stand beside the fuming Castiel. "How about we just go to the library?"

 

Cas didn't say anything, and Sam took this as his cue to start in that direction, making sure to shorten his strides so that his companion could keep up easily.

 

As they walked, Sam gazed around at the town; nondescript. He put his hands in his pockets and jingled some change. There weren't many people around in the late morning, most of them already at work or at home to escape the ever-present heat.

 

If it hadn't been such a fresh wound, Sam would have laughed at the way Cas stalked beside him, body drawn up and face stormy.

 

"You know," Sam began again, knowing there were at least two blocks till their destination, "if you have something you need to say, you can always say it to me. No judgment. Not that...I'm really in any place to judge anyone," he said, laughing lightly, giving the prickling shorter man a sideways glance.

 

While Sam's patented brand of self-deprecation usually made Castiel feel sad, he was currently much too consumed with how much he wanted to punch someone's lights out to let it get to him.

 

"Cas?" Sam tried again, after receiving another five steps of silence.

 

"It isn't fair of him," Cas grit. "He's being petty, and he refuses to speak to me, and he hardly even looks in my direction. He - he _decides_ not to touch me, and doesn't even ask me what I think about it. Doesn't even want to talk about what happened!"

 

Sam was thankful for the lack of passerby as Cas launched into his tirade.

 

"How am I supposed to know - I just—" Cas stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. "I'm not enough for him. And he won't tell me how to improve, he just shoves me aside. I want to improve, I want to fix whatever's wrong, but he won't even give me a chance!"

 

He huffed and Sam deflated a little.

 

"I feel immensely stupid, and it's _his_ fault!" Cas said, nearly shouting, and Sam nodded sympathetically.

 

"Dean Winchester one-oh-one: if there's a problem, stonewall until it goes away," he said, voice even.

 

"It's selfish!" Cas spat, walking again, Sam following a step behind.

 

"I don't want to be—look, I don't want to be really forward, okay, but, like—the sex." Sam weighed his words, cautious of Castiel's mood.

 

He chanced a glance and was surprised to see that Cas' eyes weren't the furious hellfires of earlier but something far more resigned. Ashamed.

 

"It's as bad as you think it is," the former angel mumbled, a dark blush gathering on his cheeks. "It really is, Sam." His voice was a croak, and their pace slowed to something more manageable.

 

"But why? I mean, okay, well, like—” Once again Sam found himself in the awkward position of discussing his brother's sex life, but he couldn't find it in him to be bothered. He hated seeing Cas at odds with Dean, hated seeing Dean at odds with anyone Sam cared about. “It isn't anatomical, is it?"

 

"No," Cas replied, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand. All his energy seemed to have faded into his familiar quietude. "As far as I know all the _parts_ work. It's...it's difficult to explain. It's like Dean..."

 

It was obvious he couldn't bring himself to say it.

 

"Is he—alright?" Sam said, and the thick air swallowed up his words. It was muggy from the river, and his hair was sticking uncomfortably to the back of his neck in the humidity.

 

"I don't know," Cas whispered, brows furrowing in confusion, privately trying to piece it together as he voiced it for Sam. "It's like he's _starving_. Like he can't be satisfied no matter what we do. It's not enough. I'm not enough for him. Or—me, for that matter..."

 

He trailed off.

 

"But you said he wants you, right? Like, he's attracted, so, I mean, it's not like he's not—turned on by you, right?"

 

"Understated. We both _want_ each other. But it doesn't matter how much, how violently we want each other. We never get anywhere." He shook his head. "I don't know. I only know it's not supposed to be that way. That I know, Sam. That isn't what I want or intend when we try to do those things. I want it to be— _kinder_ than what it is."

 

He ended on a hush, and Sam's fingers toyed with quarter in his pocket.

 

Of all the ways he had imagined his brother and Castiel to be, the way Cas described it was not one of them.

 

The library was only a few feet ahead, and Sam was grateful there was something to distract them for a few hours.

 

"Sam?"

 

"Yeah?" he said, startled by the sound of Cas' voice. They had come upon the steps to the library and were paused at the bottom of them, looking up at the glass doors.

 

"You are my best friend."

 

Sam's eyes widened and his face collapsed into a soft smile as Cas' shy eyes found his.

 

"I thought you should know that," Cas added quietly, swallowing.

 

"Worse things to be than your best friend," Sam chuckled, and the corners of Cas' mouth turned upwards in genuine pleasure for the first time in too long.

 

For a moment at the bottom of the stairs, Sam considered his position, speculating on Dean and Cas while this all had unfolded around him. The strangeness swirling over everything, coloring it all in odd coincidences.

 

The more he thought about it, the more he thought he might have a hunch, and he wasn't sure how he thought about that yet.

 

 

* * *

 

Dean swiped his finger under the rim of his stiff collar and trailed after the medical examiner from table to table, glancing at the victims, assessing them, and then moving on in that practiced rhythm he could perform with his eyes closed.

 

As far as drowned bodies were concerned, it wasn't anything impressive or particularly alarming. The mottled-grey and swollen corpses were like any others he'd ever seen, save for the ectoplasm under their fingernails, proving David right.

 

"Anything else out of the ordinary?" he asked the coroner shortly, wanting to get out of the enclosed space as soon as possible. The grey walls were hideously drab, and the whole room was a tight fit. He felt like a little kid knocking around in a cupboard under the sink, everything bent up out of its natural state. The bruises under his clothes weren't helping, either.

 

"Nothing really," the plain-faced coroner said, tapping the steel-topped gurney. "Well, except, maybe—there is this one—Miss Quinn.” He ambled over to one of the bodies and lifted up her hand, turning it palm up. "One of them odd tattoos. I've seen it come through here before a few times."

 

Dean stared at the asterisk inked into the center of her hand.

 

He couldn't even bring himself to be shocked anymore. _Hell._ Even trying to outrun this thing it seemed damnation-bent on following them.

 

"Yeah," he said gruffly, clearing his throat. "We've been briefed on that - it's some kind of religious mark."

 

"Really? That's nice. I hate it when it's drugs, and it always seems to be drugs. It's not a cult, is it?"

 

"Undetermined," Dean muttered, unsure himself if even that were true, touching the doll-like hand, the smooth dead skin. He traced the mark with his eyes.

 

"It's odd to find them in a town this big,” he added. “It's a rural thing."

 

"Really? Like I said, I've seen one or two before. Maybe just one other, now that I think about it. Do you think it has anything to do with your case?"

 

"I'll have to discuss it with my partners, see if it does..."

 

Dean laid her hand carefully back on the tabletop.

 

"It'd be a shame if it were," the coroner mused. "She has a sweet look about her."

 

Dean made an honest effort not to look at the young girl's features. She couldn't have been more than twenty. Pretty.

 

He hummed in agreement and thanked the coroner for his time, walking quickly out of the morgue and into the adjacent hallway. He leaned against the wall and rubbed his face tiredly, wincing and rubbing the bruise on his neck.

 

He could still feel the girls' dead skin on the pads of his fingers.

 

* * *

 

"You find anything?" Sam said, looking up from the obituary he'd been reading.

 

Cas shuffled through some of the papers in front of him, looking sallow and hollow-eyed in the fluorescent light.

 

"Mourning loved ones, apologies for the victims dying before their time, the city council speaking of the misfortune, but nothing substantial," he answered. "For all I can tell, these people merely walked into the river and never came out. No motive, really, just walked in."

 

"That means they were probably lured," Sam sighed. "But how? What does a girl from the fifties care about these random people? I mean - they really don't have much in common. They're all from different demographics, and none of them would be in the same circles..."

 

Castiel stared at the picture of Natalie Quinn, smiling in her high school senior portrait.

 

“ _‘Natalie is survived by her parents, Mark and Linda, and two brothers, as well as long-time boyfriend Xavier Travis,’”_ he read aloud. He gnawed on his lip and looked back at the others he had been sifting through, eyes narrowing in concentration.

 

"All of these people have had long time lovers. Not necessarily married, but committed relationships," Cas said, with authority, and Sam looked up, brushing some hair out of his face. Cas pulled some of the more significant ones out and turned them so Sam could see them across the table.

 

"See: _E_ _ngaged for three years;_ _long-time boyfriend; husband;_ _companion of twenty years._ All of them were committed to someone."

 

"Okay—I mean, that's a long shot, but we have some kind of a connection between victims. But as far as I've read, Sandra Eadie didn't have a lover," Sam said quietly, thinking. "At least, not at the time of her death."

 

"Before?"

 

"Before," Sam repeated, digging in his pile for the headline. He scrolled his finger down the page, eyes darting over the fine print. "Wait, here—ex-fiancee, Airforce Pilot Jeremy Rolands...says he was extremely sorry to see her die. They broke up because they'd been having altercations, but it won't say over what, which probably means that they censored it—which _probably_ means infidelity or some kind of gambling problem, or—God knows what else."

 

"Perhaps she is jealous of these people," Castiel murmured. "Jealous of their relationships?"

 

"Maybe...but why all of a sudden? Why out of nowhere? I mean, people are in lasting relationships all over the place for years, but suddenly she wakes up and starts killing people. What triggered her? And what the hell is she even getting out of it?"

 

"Altercations. They were in an unhappy relationship,” Cas mumbled to himself, futzing with a string from his shirt.

 

"None of these people seem _unhappy_ , though," Sam mused, tapping the obituaries. "I mean, the articles don't mention it..."

 

"They wouldn't have to be unhappy in a long-term sense...just a short term. Enough to maybe walk away, to walk down to the river, maybe to clear their heads." Cas pulled the articles out and scanned them all again, slapping pages down onto the tabletop. "They fight with their lover, hypothetically, and walk away for a while, and then they go missing, and their bodies are dredged up."

 

"How is she getting them out in the water?" Sam countered.

 

"I don't know...she must be showing them something. Something they want to see..." He shook his head. "You're right, though. Why is she waking up now? Why now? People fight all the time with people they love. Look at Dean and I," he said, an aside. "Why now?"

 

"I don't know," Sam sighed, rubbing his eyes. "But I need some coffee if I'm gonna try and figure it out. Still doesn't help us figure out who her next victim might be, either...long-term relationships, might as well put eighty percent of the town on notice."

 

He got to his feet, pulled his suit jacket from the back of the library chair. Cas didn't move. He was still looking down at the articles, hands splayed white and spider-like on the surface of the table.

 

“Cas,” Sam said. “You coming?”

 

“Do you remember what Yann said,” Castiel said slowly, eyes tugging up from the pages in front of him to Sam's, “about all the water spirits going quiet, suddenly?”

 

“Yeah. So?”

 

“Maybe they're waking up again,” Cas said. He stood, leaned against the desk, head down, thinking. “Maybe this is—maybe this is the beginning of the backlash, you know?”

 

“The backlash?”

 

“Everything's been golden all this time.” Cas straightened, but his shoulders were still hunched, a dark look about his face. “Until that last place. And now we know—now we know it's Death walking, that it's bad. That Dean was right all along.” Something prickled behind his eyes at that, but he didn't let it surface, didn't want to give it ground. Didn't want to think about what that meant for them, they two, and what had been building on the road. “And then a hunt surfaces where we haven't had a decent one in months. Something triggered this ghost.” He gnawed at his lip. “Maybe this is it. And it's starting, the big bad _thing_ _._ ”

 

Sam faltered a little, his shoulders coming down. “...you think?”

 

“I don't know.” Cas ran his hands over his face. “I don't know about anything, to be honest.”

 

 

* * *

 

When they regrouped in town later with David and Dean, any tension that had been relieved in their time apart flew back as soon as Cas and Dean were within earshot of each other. At least, Sam thought, they'd stopped glaring at each other—now they just avoided one another's eyes, focusing on lampposts or birds or on someone else's face.

 

David, who looked only marginally more awake now than he had earlier, mentioned something about interviewing the witness who'd seen Sandra Eadie's ghost. There was a shuffling around the seats in the Impala—Dean and Cas ending up together in the back seat, much to their chagrin, and sitting awkwardly there with their knees close together and their hands safely in their laps— and David sleepily directed Sam down the main road out into what constituted Hartman suburbs, and they pulled out of the town center under the fading afternoon.

 

“Find anything interesting on the bodies?” Sam asked, finding Dean's face in the rear-view mirror as he drove.

 

“Just a lot of ectoplasmic gunk under their nails,” Dean said. “And—”

 

He glanced sideways, uncomfortably aware of Castiel's warmth next to him.

 

“Star,” he mumbled, after a moment. “Star on one of their palms.”

 

Sam and Cas caught each other's eyes in the mirror and pressed their lips tight. David sat up a little.

 

“That mean somethin'?” he asked.

 

Sam shook his head. “Just—might be relevant to our other case, that's all.”

 

Silence fell in the car, then, as David mumbled directions to Sam, and Dean and Castiel drifted into their own little island of seclusion in the back seat.

 

Dean chanced a sideways glance at the angel—the former angel, now, he supposed—to see him looking out the window, watching the clapboard houses and low clouds whisk by. Watching a couple walking their dog on the pale pavement, a kid riding her tricycle around a corner. His chin was in his hand, and Dean thought he looked very sad, now that he wasn't all sharp-faced with glaring at him, and he felt a little twinge in his chest.

 

 _God damn it._ Dean ran a hand over his face and slumped a little against the leather seat. He didn't know why, really, they were making such a big deal of this. After the last—failure, he supposed, between Hartman and the Ozarks, they'd hardly said a kind word to each other, had hardly even been able to bear looking at each other. They'd crawled into the shower together that night, washed off the filth of what they'd done, and gone to bed, hadn't even bothered with apologies. What could apologies have done, anyway? _Sorry_ didn't smooth out bruises and bury blood. It didn't do a damn bit of good.

 

Dean realizes with a pang that neither had said they loved the other since that village in the hills.

 

He swallowed, and gently reached across the miniscule yet infinitesimal space between them to touch Castiel's thigh; but Cas scowled at his touch and shifted away from beneath Dean's hand.

 

Dean stared at him a moment, and felt his face go dark again.

 

 _Fine,_ he thought, turning his own gaze out the window. Cas was acting like a twelve-year-old with scabbed knees, for Christ's sake. He wasn't going to indulge him.

 

* * *

 

Megan Sohre was, by all appearances, in her early twenties, and deeply in mourning. She was waiting on her porch for them when they pulled up, her cell phone in her hand, constantly wiping at her eyes with the side of her index finger. Her mascara was smudged down her face in dirty tear-tracks; Dean wondered why she'd even bothered with makeup at all.

 

“Ryan Abraham. Long-time boyfriend,” David muttered, as a reminder, as they made their way up the sidewalk to her porch. The Mississippi tributary ran just a little ways away, behind the trees and fences, and Cas tilted his head towards its distant sound as they walked. “Got pulled in just a while ago. Two days tops?”

 

“Tall skinny dude?” Dean asked. He ran the four dead faces in the morgue through his mind.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Was he the one with the crossed palms?” Sam asked in a low voice, and Dean shook his head.

 

“Nah, that was a girl.”

 

“Name of Quinn, right?” David said. “That girl had a sweet face.”

 

Megan Sohre got up when she saw them making their way to the top of her stairs, and tried tearfully to smile a little.

 

“Are you the, uh—” She sniffed, pawing at her running eye makeup again. “Agents?”

 

“Yes ma'am,” David said, coming all at once alive; the other three glanced at him. He'd shaken off the weary posture and looked almost professional now, despite his wrinkled suit and the enormous bags under his eyes.

 

“Four agents,” Megan said, raising an eyebrow slightly. “Seems like a lot for a bunch of, um—accidental deaths, y-you know.”

 

At the word 'deaths' on her own lips she crumpled a little, and sat back down in her wicker chair, letting her hands rest in the crevasse of her black skirt between her thighs.

 

“That's just routine, ma'am,” David said smoothly. “We don't make the rules, we just follow 'em, and all that.”

 

She nodded, shifting in her chair.

 

“That said—” David twisted to look at the others, standing helplessly behind the chair he'd settled into. “I don't think we need four people crowdin' your space, ma'am. D'you mind if my colleagues take a look around your place? For routine purposes, of course.”

 

Megan swallowed thickly. “Not at all,” she said, waving her hand towards the front screen door. “Go right ahead, it's fine.”

 

David nodded at them, and—for the first time even slightly convinced that he actually did have the capacity to do his job—the trio went inside to the cool, unlit Sohre house, the river breeze blowing humid through the open windows and sending the white curtains aflutter as they passed inside.

 

“Right,” Cas said, clearing his throat a little. “What are we looking for?”

 

“Evidence that they were unhappy?” Sam said, hunching his shoulders. He was at something of a loss; he had a feeling they all were. “Maybe—something indicating he was unfaithful, or she was unfaithful, or something? Or a hint of who the ghost might go after next? It's a long shot, but—”

 

“Great,” Dean mumbled. “A nice big general field. Awesome.”

 

Sam scowled at him, but he was already moving off into the house, hands in his pockets. Sam looked to Cas, who sent a little glare off at Dean's retreating back, and then mumbled “I'll look upstairs” and swept away, careful to avoid brushing Dean's shoulder as he rounded the corner and vanished up the stairs.

 

Dean glanced back at Sam as if to say _can you believe this guy? what the hell?,_ to which Sam rolled his eyes and returned a tight face.

 

The sooner those two stopped bickering, the better.

 

 

* * *

 

The bedroom was fairly easy to find, and Cas was drawn there for reasons he couldn't quite name; he assumed any incriminating evidence of any affair or altercation would be there, in the small and private spaces these people kept. Through the open bedroom window he could hear David and Megan talking on the porch. For a moment he lingered near the white windowsill, listening—they were talking about the figure Megan had seen in the water, minutes before her boyfriend had wandered into the current. He sighed, leaned his forehead against the frame, closed his eyes.

 

The breeze whistled a little as it came in under the windowpane, a little noise over the distant sound of the river, and Cas remembered himself.

 

He started with the nightstand, the one with the photograph of Megan and the tall thin man he assumed could only be Ryan. There was nothing in the drawers except a pair of reading glasses and some debit card receipts for things like coffee and lunch dates; nothing on the shelf except generic political thrillers.

 

It was much the same in the other nightstand—a Bible with near-pristine pages, spare change, the sort of thin nonfiction books given by parents at birthdays.

 

Cas sighed, running a hand back through his hair. He didn't even know what he was looking for. Some indication of a rupture, some indication that they'd been moving apart enough for Ryan to be snatched away by the ghost of Sandra Eadie. _Think. Think._

 

He leaned against one pale-rose-wallpapered wall for a moment and closed his eyes.

 

He tried to picture it as— _his_ bedroom. Tried to imagine, instead of two relative strangers in the picture frame on the nightstand, a photograph of himself, and Dean. Their arms around each other like that. Lore on the bookshelf instead of spy novels. A Bible with more weary pages. A bed—he smiled a little—rumpled from too much use, instead of smoothed out and neatly made like Megan Sohre's. If this were his bedroom—if by some horrible tragedy Dean had been lured to his death by a vengeful spirit—what would have pulled them apart? Where would it have been hiding here in the cooling light of near-dusk?

 

_Teeth through lips. Dark bruises on white skin._

 

He felt his own smile falter a little and opened his eyes to the cream-colored carpet beneath his feet.

 

_Fucking. Not making love._

 

Castiel frowned. Shook his head. Not now. Now there was a case. Megan Sohre and Ryan Abraham were not him and not Dean. There was something else.

 

Out of helpless uncertainty more than anything else, Cas moved to the closet, opened the white door and pulled on the chain that hung from the naked bulb in the ceiling. When it sputtered to life and began to buzz he saw that most of the clothes here were clearly Megan's, hung neatly and pressed carefully. One rack, though, held a few men's shirts, and some men's jeans were folded on the stacking cabinet against the wall.

 

Infidelity, Sam had said. It seemed the most likely scenario. Gently Cas ran his fingers over the hanging shirts, rustling the hangers on their rod, and then he paused. Reached in and plucked a long brown hair from the collar of one of them.

 

Megan Sohre was bleach-blonde.

 

Cas smiled a little in triumph.

 

He dug a little more, feeling inside the pockets of dress shirts and the folded jeans, until he found what he was looking for—another debit card receipt, this one with a smudged and scrawled telephone number and smiling face where the tip was meant to be written in—from the handwriting he assumed it was a woman's—and under _cashier_ , a name: Hailey.

 

Cas slipped the receipt into his pocket and turned out the light, and went back downstairs to rejoin the brothers.

 

* * *

 

“He was seeing someone else, I think,” Cas said, when they'd congregated in the kitchen. David and Megan were still speaking on the porch. He gave Sam the crumpled receipt; Sam smoothed it out and Dean peered over his shoulder at it. “I found a woman's hair on one of his shirts. It definitely wasn't Megan's.”

 

“Yikes,” Dean mumbled. “And if those letters on the desk up front were anything to go by, they were gonna get engaged soon.”

 

“Yeah.” Sam huffed a little, raising an eyebrow. “Boyfriend cheats on you and gets nabbed by a ghost? Sucks to be Megan Sohre.”

 

“Okay, so say she found out,” Dean said, leaning against the counter. “They're fighting about this chick, Ryan gets pissed, storms out...Megan follows him...I mean, the river's right over there, it isn't far. He crosses Sandra Eadie's ghost, she zeroes in on him, lures him out somehow. Boom, drowns him.” He shrugged, stuffing his hands in his pockets again. “And Megan sees a little of her. Probably thinks she's seeing things.”

 

“Sounds plausible,” Sam said. He tucked the receipt into his suit pocket. “So she goes after couples at odds because of what her lover did to her in the fifties—altercations, or whatever—lures them in. Punishing the ones who do the hurting.”

 

“It wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that she might prey on both sides of these—indiscretions,” Cas said. “This Hailey might be on her radar.”

 

“Great,” Dean said, nodding, pulling at his mouth a little. “So now we've just got to torch the bitch before she nabs Hailey the Cashier. No big thing.”

 

“They never recovered her body,” Cas said. The river breeze was tousling the curtains over the kitchen window and distantly he heard the screen door creak open, and the sounds of David and Megan entering the house. “She jumped off the bridge just down the road. They buried an empty casket. She could be anywhere.”

 

“Maybe David knows?” Sam said, dropping his voice to a hush as the footsteps neared.

 

They all went quiet when the older hunter and the grieving woman found them in the kitchen, Megan with her hands fisted in her skirt, looking entirely miserable.

 

“I think we've got everything we need, ma'am,” David was saying in a low and calming voice.

 

Megan nodded, smiling tearfully.

 

“Ready to head out, gents?” David asked, looking up at the others; in near-unison they nodded, Sam pushing his hand into the pocket with the receipt. They tipped their heads in inclination to Megan Sohre as they showed themselves out, and into the falling dusk, and the river babbling a little ways off.

 

“Well,” David said, automatically slipping back into his hunched and awful posture, rubbing at his eyes, “she definitely saw our spook, I'm thinkin'.”

 

“Did she say where, exactly?” Sam prodded. “Where on the river?”

 

“In the shallows near some bridge.” They passed an opening in the trees and David paused, pointed out toward the muddy water—the single bridge lying over the tributary, leading out of town, an old and rusted red thing looming low over the current. “Thinks she was seein' things. Didn't much want to go into it.”

 

“D'you have any idea where this lady's body is?” Dean asked, rounding the driver's side of the Impala, holding out his hand expectantly to Sam for the keys. Cas, bow-shouldered, sulked around to the back passenger side, casting Sam meaningful looks over the top of the car; Sam shrugged, at a loss.

 

“Weren't ever recovered—”

 

“Even just a _vague_ idea,” Dean said, low and snappish.

 

David sighed. “Widest part of the river. Could have washed downstream far as we know. It was years ago.”

 

“Well, we've got to find her bones if we've got any hope of stopping her.” Dean swung into the front and started up the engine, slamming the door once everyone else was in. “Doesn't really matter about the victims anymore. We've gotta smoke her before she smokes anybody else.”

 

 

* * *

 

They were all in agreement, after that, that nothing more could be done that night, and that everyone was in need of a rest; they parted ways with David again in town, and watched him drive aimlessly off for a moment before heading out themselves.

 

“He's gonna fall asleep at the wheel and get himself killed,” Dean mumbled.

 

Cas opened the motel window when they got back, and leaned against the air conditioning unit with his head against the glass for a long time while the brothers got ready for bed. He hadn't realized the night before, in his concentration on being angry at Dean, that the river must have run close to the motel as well—he could just hear it, under the surge of night insects and the sound of the wind, across the parking lot, past the trees.

 

“You coming to bed?” Dean said, a bit more snappish and shortly than he'd probably intended, a while later, and Cas peeled himself away from the hypnotic sound, sighing.

 

For the second night he lay down next to Dean and didn't touch him, lay on his back looking up at the ceiling even after Sam turned out the light. No goodnights exchanged, no kisses or touches or even glances—Dean had immediately turned on his side, his bare back a pale spinal mountain range in the blue light and the soft breeze from the window.

 

Cas looked at it for a while, the rise and fall of his vertebrae. He would be tempted to touch it if he weren't afraid of Dean shrinking away—or of breaking the skin, bruising him again. If he squinted he could still see the faint pink lines where he'd dragged his fingernails down Dean's back in Iowa in all the vast natural disaster of their first attempt.

 

At least then, there had been apologies.

 

He considered it—reaching out and touching Dean's back, the knob where his spine met the nape of his neck, and whispering a _sorry, I'm so sorry we hurt each other again—_ but as soon as he shifted to turn on his side and do just that, Dean moved, pushed himself further towards the edge of the bed, and he heard him mutter, “For God's sake, go to sleep, Cas.”

 

Cas faltered, his hand outstretched in midair, and then he turned away, onto his own side, facing the other wall, the blank white space.

 

He wanted to cry. He didn't want to cry. He wished sleep could come like the snapping of fingers, that it wasn't so much like the slow burn of drowning.

 

 

* * *

 

Across town, under dawn, unseen by any soul, a body slipped ashore on a moonlit bank of the river, one star-crossed palm turned upwards in the mud, facing the lengthening sky.

 

 

* * *

 

“Dammit,” Dean said, for the fifth time since the call from David that morning, standing above the riverbank where a black tarp and a milling of paramedics and police marked the spot where one very unfortunate Hailey Horner's body had washed up in the early hours. “God _damn_ it.”

 

“We need to get on those bones pronto,” Sam mumbled. Traffic was beginning to push across the bridge, and sunrise was still coloring the water; Dean was in a foul mood, Cas was in an even fouler one, and David still had yet to arrive. Sam wondered briefly if he'd actually fallen asleep at the wheel on his way.

 

“Yeah, but where the hell are they? This is a shit ton of river to cover.”

 

“Same general spot as where Megan Sohre saw her. Maybe she's around here?”

 

“If she is, she's stuck deep in the mud,” Cas said in a soft voice. “We'll be hard pressed to dig her out if she's somewhere in the middle where it's deepest.”

 

“I fucking hate drowned ghosts, man,” Dean grumbled. “Always a pain in the ass to torch.”

 

“Maybe there's something else? A cleansing or something? Push her out?”

 

“Why the hell didn't they try to dredge her up in the fifties? Hick brass, let me tell you—”

 

“They probably figured she'd washed downstream, thought she'd be in the ocean by now.”

 

They stood there on the bank, eyes scanning the water that ran under the bridge.

 

“How deep is it?” Cas asked, turning his attention very obviously to Sam. “At the middle?”

 

“I'd have to look it up,” Sam said, shrugging. “Not too deep, I don't think. Could probably wade across this part of it if you were careful.”

 

“Might just have to come back after dark and go fishing for the bitch,” Dean mumbled. “If she's even around here at all.”

 

“If she threw herself off the bridge, and her ghost is remaining around this area, she probably didn't drift too far from the edge,” Cas said.

 

Dean rolled his shoulders. “Yeah, thanks, Captain Physics.”

 

“Dean.” Sam gave Dean a warning look.

 

Dean set his jaw, ignoring the stiff indignation that was tightening Castiel's spine. The former angel looked ready to hit something, and it was looking more and more like that thing might be Dean.

 

“I'm gonna go look at the body,” Dean said, gruffly, and started down the bank towards the black mass of Hailey's corpse.

 

Sam glanced at Cas, whose fists were clenched, his expression a mixture of hurt and upset and just plain furious, and he gently touched his shoulder.

 

“Sorry,” he said. “He's a dick sometimes, you know that.”

 

Cas looked away from Dean, closer to the water, now. “I know.” He sagged a little, momentarily rubbing at his eyes. “I just wish he'd stop being so petty.”

 

Sam smiled, sympathetically, and moved a little closer to Castiel, as if by the presence of his body he could soothe a little of the ache he knew was harboring in his friend's chest.

 

For the fifteenth time since the beginning of this hunt, Sam wished to whatever God was left that they'd resolve this stupidity soon, and get back to being sappy and in love. He much preferred their saccharine to their sour.

 

* * *

 

They waited on the banks until the traffic on the bridge had died down, and then four silhouettes waded carefully into the river, past the fluttering police tape in the rough rectangle around where Hailey Horner had washed ashore, no tools besides their bare hands.

 

Sam went in first, waded out holding the waterproof flashlight they'd bought in town that afternoon up above the water. It was much shallower than he'd thought—the water hardly came up past his stomach before it began to recede again. He paused at the deepest point, waiting for the others to catch up, and looked above his head to the edge of the rusted bridge, and the moon hanging low in the damp sky.

 

He imagined Sandra Eadie flinging herself from the edge, landing hard in the mud. She'd probably imagined drowning to be painless, but something this shallow would have killed her on impact. Flooded her open mouth with mud and silt until she sank into the mire and was glued there, the current too weak to wash her away, bones peeled of flesh and muscle until they turned black with age and sank like so many sticks and stones.

 

He shuddered.

 

Then Cas was there, and then Dean, and David bringing up the rear, trudging through the mud, looking—as always—ready to faceplant into the water at any given moment.

 

“Okay,” Sam said. “She can't be too deep. It looks a lot less shallow than it is. So—I say we just start feeling around.”

 

They spread out, leaning down as they went, digging their toes in to the mud to feel for anything that might be bone, pushing their fingers into the silt. The water was startlingly cold for so late in summer, the mud even more so; when Sam pulled his hand out to wake it up from the numbing chill he saw some of it stuck beneath his nails, not as black as ectoplasm, but nearly.

 

The first breadth of the river offered nothing. It wasn't until they were under the shadow of the bridge that Dean hissed “Hey!” His voice echoed under the supports above their heads; the water glimmered in reflection under Sam's flashlight against its underbelly.

 

They waded towards him, stepping carefully in the push and pull of the current. Dean wrestled with something under the water until it gave, and he pulled it out.

 

“Yahtzee,” he said, a little breathless, holding up what looked like a forearm in triumph.

 

* * *

 

It took several trips back and forth from the underside of the bridge to the shore, but eventually they'd managed to unearth most of a skeleton, carrying Sandra Eadie back in rattling bunches to the dry dusty spot David had cleared out to burn her. Cas was the one to find the skull, and stared at it all the way back to shore, placing the half-rotted thing in the pile with blackened ribs and decaying finger-bones.

 

After a few hours the mud revealed nothing else—anything else of her that survived had either been washed away or dissolved to nothing by the years and the water, and all that remained of her was jumbled like a fallen Jenga tower on the riverbank.

 

“I'd still like to know what triggered her,” David said, as Sam was coming back down the bank from the Impala, where he'd gone to get the matches and the salt. “Don't seem natural, a ghost waitin' that long to wake up.”

 

Neither Dean nor Castiel said anything. They were standing on opposite ends of the pile of bones, looking down at it, and not at one another.

 

They wasted no time in setting her ablaze, a dim flaring light under the shadow of the bridge.

 

“Good riddance,” Dean muttered, watching her burn; and he met Cas' eyes for just a moment over her flaming, but what—if anything—that matched gaze said, neither of them could tell.

 

* * *

 

They got back to the motel late, too exhausted to do much more than dry off and collapse to sleep.

 

Dean considered, briefly, before he drifted off—acutely aware of the weight of Cas' turned back behind him on the bed, the sad little clutch of his fingers on the pillow—whispering an apology, just something to clear the air a little; but he was so tired, and Cas—he wasn't sure he even knew about Cas anymore.

 

It could wait until tomorrow, he thought. In the morning he'd make a point of it, say something regardless of whether or not it earned him a glare. He was angry, at himself as much as Cas, but he missed him. He missed kissing him, touching him.

 

 _Tomorrow_ , Dean thought. _First thing_.

 

 _It can wait until tomorrow_.

 

 

* * *

 

Dean couldn't say why he woke when he did. At first he thought it was because the bedside clock was flashing at him—generic twelve-oh-oh, as if the power had gone out—but lying there, breathing, trying to decipher it, he realized that the weight of Cas on the mattress behind him was gone.

 

The second thing he noticed was that the motel door was open, and the cool night wind was blowing in.

 

He sat up, throwing the covers back, and leaned over to turn on the light. Sam shifted in his sleep and then blinked awake, grumbling incoherently, and then he sat up as well, leaning on his elbow.

 

“Why's the door open?” he slurred. “Dean—”

 

Dean didn't answer him; he was already up out of bed, leaning into the dark bathroom. Empty. He turned to the open door, the heavy night outside, and the gentle far-off glimmer of the river under the even further town lights, ignoring Sam's continued mumbling of “Why're you up? Where's Cas?”

 

He paused only for a moment before it occurred to him what might have happened.

 

“Shit,” he breathed, and then he was tearing back around the bed, fumbling for his jeans in the dark. “Shit, shit, shit—”

 

“ _Dean,_ ” Sam snapped, petulantly, sitting up all the way. “What the hell? It's like—somethin' in the morning—”

 

“Shut the fuck up, Sam, that bitch ghost's got Cas,” Dean snapped, and Sam was suddenly all alertness, his face going wide, and then he was scrambling for his own clothes just as Dean was hurtling out the door. Sam only barely remembered to snatch the shotgun full of salt rounds from beside the jamb.

 

The harsh asphalt of the parking lot stung Dean's bare feet but he pounded across it anyway, the night chill on his arms; he heard Sam tumble out of the room after him and they ran toward the water, towards the faint dirt path that led down to the water from the top of the levee separating the parking lot from the current.

 

“Goddammit,” Dean hissed—there Cas was, just a little silhouette, his movements jerking and slow, as if he were still asleep, hovering on the riverbank—about to step into the water.

 

“Cas!” he called, stopping only a moment with Sam breathing hard behind him before picking up again, hurling himself down the levee, risking broken ankles over the jagged rocks, but Cas didn't even turn his head.

 

He began walking. Straight into the water.

 

“Mother _fucker!_ ” Dean snarled. “ _Cas!_ You stupid son of a bitch, what the hell are you doing?!”

 

His heart was hammering in his chest and he was so intent on the figure of Castiel walking straight into the current— _much deeper here than at the bridge_ , Dean thought, with absolute horror, _much, much deeper—_ that he tripped; his ankle turned on an upraised levee stone and twisted painfully, and he fell, slamming hard into the ground, another rock jabbing against his Adam's apple and knocking him breathless.

 

He gasped, scrambling back onto his knees—his palms were dashed with scrapes, his throat hurt like hell, and then Sam was there, grabbing his arm and pulling him up. Dean's ankle was pounding like a heartbeat but he ran on it anyway, stumbled down the rest of the levee, Sam at his heels, too winded to call Cas' name so Sam called it for him, shouted it over the increasing rush of the river.

 

 _Fuck._ Cas was almost up to his chest now, arms held out, and Dean remembered with a jolt of terror that the stupid bastard couldn't even swim.

 

The last thing he thought before he plunged blindly in after Cas was _not my angel, you bitch._

 

Then the cold night water was enveloping him, black as anything, sucking him sideways, and he could hardly make out Cas' rapidly shrinking form against the trees on the opposite shore, could only barely see that the water was up to his shoulders now. What the hell did he think he was doing? Wasn't he smart enough to out-think a _ghost_? And hadn't they burned her to cinders just hours ago?

 

Dean pushed past the pain in his foot and kicked off, kicking and scooping at the water, pulling himself towards Cas. He wasn't too far off now—if he could just fight the tug of the river a few more yards—

 

 _There_. With the same rush of triumph he'd felt pulling Sandra Eadie's bone from the riverbed, he felt his arms latch around the angel's skinny chest, and he yanked, knocking Cas off his feet and kicking back, scrabbling for hold on Cas' suddenly awake and flailing body. Cas sputtered and jerked, his head knocking back into Dean's nose, abrupt and hard, and Dean let out a noise of pain.

 

“Quit moving, you idiot, it's just me!” he shouted, pushing desperately back to where Sam was standing with one foot in the water, waiting for them, his hands an anxious flickering mess around his head.

 

“Dean?” Cas spluttered, spitting out a mouthful of water, going suddenly heavy in Dean's arms. Dean pulled and tugged towards the shore, dragging him, ignoring the pounding of his ankle. “Why am I—”

 

He was cut off by their abrupt drop onto the riverbank, a shock of solidity to Dean's tailbone and Cas' head, and Dean collapsed backwards, pulling Cas down with him. Sam immediately scrambled to help them, gripping Cas' arm and hauling him to his feet, then crouching down to pull Dean up as well.

 

“What the hell were you doing, you dumb bastard?!” Dean snapped, as soon as he was on his feet, reaching forward and grabbing Cas' tee-shirt in two fists.

 

“I—”

 

For a bewildered moment Cas thought Dean was going to shove him, or smack him, but instead Dean pulled him forward hard and caught him in his arms, and sank back down into the mud, holding Cas tight against his chest.

 

They were sopping wet, extremely cold, both of them shivering with shock and adrenaline, and Dean's face was pressed into Cas' neck, and Cas froze for a moment, kneeling in the rocks and muck with him, before he hesitantly put his arms around him, clutched him back.

 

Sam stood breathlessly by, watching, scrubbing sleep and fear from his eyes. He stumbled back and sat down hard on a levee rock nearby, and tried to catch his wind. His brother and Cas were a tangled crouching mass by the water, and he could see Dean's hands, veins standing out with how hard he was holding on to the fallen angel's body in the puddle forming under their dripping bodies.

 

It was about damn time.

 

* * *

 

They made their way slowly back up the levee, both Dean and Cas leaning on Sam's shoulders for support, Dean limping on his injured ankle and Cas still a little dazed. As soon as they got back to the open room, Sam deposited them both in the bathroom to clean up, and, after making sure they were both alive and not likely to walk back into the river anytime soon, closed the front door and went gratefully back to bed.

 

Cas sat on the closed toilet as Dean yanked all the towels off the rack and knelt down with a wince in front of him. They were both still dripping everywhere. Dean's face was hard when he said, “Take off your clothes,” but it wasn't the same hardness as before.

 

Cas looked at him for a moment before he obeyed, pulling off his wet tee-shirt and boxer briefs and tossing them into the bathtub. Dean followed suit, shivering with night cold on his skin, and draped a towel over Cas' head, gripping it and scrubbing, pushing it over his face and his neck and his shoulders, chest, arms, cleaning off the clinging water a little too roughly.

 

“Dean,” Cas said, a few times, in the midst of being rubbed dry. “Dean—”

 

“Give me a minute, Cas, you're gonna catch your death.”

 

“Dean, I'm fine.”

 

“Did you swallow a lot of water? I swear to God if you up and die of cholera or some shit—”

 

“Dean.” Cas caught his wrists, stalled him for a moment in his frantic work. “I'm okay. I can dry myself off.”

 

“Shut up,” Dean said, voice hoarse, pulling his arm away. “Let me do it. It's fine.”

 

“Dean. You need to dry off too. And see to your ankle—”

 

“Was it that bitch? We probably missed a bone or two, _God,_ I hate drowned ghosts—”

 

“ _Dean._ ” Cas grabbed his wrists again, harder this time, and with his other hand he grasped Dean's chin, tilted his face up. “Stop talking. Stop moving. I'm fine.”

 

Slowly, Dean's eyes drifted up to his, and his hands fell out of Cas' grip to settle on the angel's bare thighs, still clutching the towel.

 

Cas cupped his face and bent down—he was very serene, Dean thought, for having been nearly drowned—and kissed him, and all rational thoughts floated blissfully from Dean's mind. He leaned into it, pushed into it, felt Cas' long damp eyelashes against his cheek.

 

 _God,_ he'd missed that.

 

“Let me,” Cas murmured. He slipped off his seat and down onto the tile with Dean, knelt there naked with him, and picked up one of the other towels from the floor. Gently he scrubbed at Dean's face, catching droplets from his hair, dewy brightness from his lashes.

 

Slowly Dean began again, as well, softer now, pulling the towel around the small of Cas' back, pushing it in tender circles against his hipbones, drying the insides of his thighs, the rounds of his knees. Cas' eyelids were low, as if he were near-asleep again, drowsily settled on his own task, drying the river from Dean's body.

 

“It was her,” he said, almost dreamily. Dean saw what looked like the beginnings of a smile on his face. “But she didn't want to hurt me.”

 

“She drowns—Cas, she drowns people,” Dean said, letting the towel drop aside, letting his hands come protectively to Cas' waist. “She drowns people who've been fighting with their—with their—”

 

“She didn't want to hurt me,” Cas said, more firmly. “She—wanted to show me something.”

 

“Show you—?”

 

“She said...to come and see the catfish.” Cas' voice was hazy, half-asleep, it seemed. He set his towel aside and reached up, stroking Dean's wet hair out of his face. “Golden catfish, Dean, like nothing you've ever seen. Huge...beautiful things.”

 

“Cas.”

 

“She wanted to warn us,” Cas continued, tipping forward a little, resting his forehead on Dean's shoulder. “She...said not to let our hearts get too heavy...said we're not supposed to be catfish. We're supposed to be men.”

 

“Cas, she was lying.”

 

“She _wasn't_ lying.”

 

He said it with such conviction that Dean fell quiet, and let his hands move up to wrap around Cas' body again, pull him in close.

 

Hell, but he'd missed this. How had he ever been angry?

 

“She only...she only stayed to show me the catfish...tell us we're too valuable to break apart. We can't break apart, Dean.”

 

Dean swallowed hard, pressed his face softly into the curve of Cas' neck.

 

“We won't. Okay?”

 

“Promise.”

 

“I promise, babe. We won't.”

 

“She had stars in her hands,” Cas whispered. His hand rose to hover over Dean's sternum, his fingers gently drifting down the plane of the hunter's chest, tracing the last of the water as it came down in droplets across his skin. “Promise.”

 

“I promise.”

 

“I'm sorry.”

 

Dean breathed. Cas' skin smelled like mud, like mud and cloud and cotton.

 

“I'm sorry too.”

 

They collapsed a little on the tile, melting into each other, warm, now, apologies in the bending of their bodies.

 

“I love you,” Cas said, as a child would say it, meekly.

 

Dean closed his eyes against the hum of the bathroom light and the scent of Cas' skin, the weight of him in his arms.

 

“I love you, too,” he said.

 

They stayed there a while, rocking just a little, until their bones were dry, and their lungs were full.

 

 

* * *

 

Sam tossed and turned. He tried to get comfortable, but it was no use. He was too wound up; his body was restless from the run out to the river and all the excitement at God-knew-what-hour and now he was trying in vain to get back to sleep.

 

Dean and Cas were one giant lump on the next bed with their limbs so tangled he couldn’t tell one body from the other, and it made him glad. _Relieved_ was a better word, probably, but _glad_ would do at four AM.

 

He scrubbed at his face and kicked his legs uselessly again. The two snoring beside him had come quietly out of the bathroom and had sat up watching TV on a low volume until they were drowsy enough to get under the covers. They’d been fluffy-haired and handsy with each other, touching discreetly during commercials, and Sam had done his brotherly duty and pretended to be stupid and asleep. He knew they were making up for lost time, or something to that effect.

 

His own bed felt huge, an uncommon feeling for someone of his stature. The emptiness was big and lonesome, and he was tired, but unable to sleep, and frustrated; so he got up quietly, shrugged on his jacket and stepped into his shoes and wandered out the door in his pajama pants and t-shirt, the door snicking quietly shut behind him.

 

He didn’t know what he was doing, really, trailing up the cement hallway. He stopped at a vending machine and plunked a few quarters in for a Snickers bar, bending to pick it up when it clattered into the bottom of the machine. As he moved he felt his phone start to tumble out of his pocket, and quickly scrambled to grab it, catching it nearly midway and righting himself.

 

He put the end of the Snickers bar wrapper in his mouth and pulled it apart, biting into the candy and sighing.

 

His phone flipped open and he rubbed his thumb over the screen, smudging away the fingerprints. He crammed in another bite of candy and worried the middle menu button a few times.

 

“Don’t even,” he said to himself, breaking the hush. “Don’t even think about it.”

 

So why was he doing just that?

 

_You just call me when you get a mind._

 

If that were all it would take, he would have called her ages ago.

 

He groaned softly and rubbed his forehead. Even with all the muddy mess that had been swirling around them for what felt like ages, Lily Francis had hovered in the back of his head. He wanted to stop thinking about her, really. It was ridiculous. He’d met her one time. A freak chance, and she’d been – well, she’d been drop dead gorgeous for one thing. That alone was enough to justify his constant replay of every moment they’d spent together, but there was something else. Something deeper than that.

 

A part of his spirit that had immediately recognized something of the same in hers; that wild need, the urge, to get out of the rut she was in. To change something about her life and make a move somewhere, to drag herself out of a hole of habit. He’d barely met her a full minute and he'd already been able to tell that she was chomping at the bit for something. Anything, really.

 

And when she’d looked up at him in the band tent and stared at him like she’d been waiting her whole life for him, he had seen so clearly what her life must have been. The hours pacing the floors and getting talked up and talked about, the times she'd lain awake and thought for sure she was crazy as they all said she was, and that she should get her act together, do what had to be done for her family. That the peach orchard was all she was ever going to know. Too-small skin and a too-small town. That there was no sense in dreaming about what was never going to happen.

 

She'd stared up at him like he had done something big. Like he had shaken it all up, changed everything, stumbled into her and mixed her about, made her start to believe that her life could be more than peaches and familiar faces. But that was ridiculous. It was stupid. He was _here today, gone tomorrow_. He wasn't what she wanted. It wasn't him. It couldn't be.

 

He wasn't in love with her. She wasn't in love with him. That was impossible and stupid, so why, _why_ , was he still thinking about her? Why did her face keep appearing every time he closed his eyes—Lily Francis staring out the window of her father's store, elbows on the counter, fingers padding at her lip, waiting?

 

Always waiting.

 

He just couldn’t get her out of his head. Miles and hours away from her and she was the first thing on his mind the minute he couldn’t sleep. He barely knew her. He’d met countless girls in countless towns, but this one had stuck on him, had woven herself into his pulse, somehow.

 

He stood under the metal portico outside the hotel and clicked through his contacts till he landed on her name.

 

Maybe he just needed to call her. Maybe he just needed an excuse to hear her voice and make sure she hadn't given up, because he wanted her to be happy. She didn't deserve to be stuck in that town, watching out windows. She shouldn't have to wait on anyone, but he knew what it was like to be caught up in other people's expectations.

 

He wrestled with it.

 

It was a little past four in the morning; there was no way she’d answer.

 

He just needed to hear it go to voicemail and be done with it. He’d put it to bed. Put her away, leave her behind…

 

He hesitated. He hit the call button and brought the phone to his ear before he could chicken out, tossing the half eaten Snickers into the garbage can next to the vending machine.

 

There was a moment of silence as the connection crackled and then the sharp artificial ringing sound.

 

_Promise you’ll pick up the phone?_

 

His stomach was a tight knot and he chewed on his lip nervously. Maybe he shouldn’t do this. Maybe he should hang up – he was sleep deprived. He was tired. Yeah, that was it. He was tired now.

 

_I promise._

 

There was a low click, and Sam froze, finger still poised on his lip. (She always worried her lip. She’d done it nearly a million times while they talked, running her fingers over it and plucking at the skin anxiously.)

 

The receiver dragged and bumped against something and his breath stalled.

 

“Hello?”

 

Sam opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out.

 

“…hello?” came her irritated drawl. “I swear if this is you punks callin’ to ask about my tits again I’m gonna call your mothers.”

 

Her voice was heavy with sleep and slightly disoriented, but she’d picked up the phone. She’d picked up the phone like she'd promised she would. His heart hammered against his chest.

 

“I’m tellin’ you, I’m gonna hang up and call your mothers!” she warned again, voice slurred, and Sam jerked back to life, shoes rasping on the concrete.

 

“It’s – it’s uh, not the boys. It’s me,” he stammered, squinting his eyes up in embarrassment. Brilliant, Winchester. _It’s me?_ Brilliant.

 

There was a silence, and he could almost see her. Maybe she’d let her hair down to sleep, but it was hot, so maybe it was up. A messy bun on the top of her head sagging from being smushed against her pillow and long chestnut strands sticking to her face. A T-shirt, or maybe a nightgown, or it didn’t matter. Her eyes even darker in the surrounding night, lids cracked sleepily.

 

“Sam?”

 

“You remember my name?” he said, a little too rushed.

 

“'Course I do," she said, her voice coming awake a little bit. "Sam. ‘Just Sam.'"

 

He breathed a laugh and leaned against one of the posts lining the sidewalk.

 

"Sam. 'Just Sam,'" he repeated.

 

"So to what do I owe the pleasure, Sam, 'just Sam'?" she said. He wondered what her bed looked like. If she was lying down or sitting up, legs drawn up chin resting on her knees. “At the— _gracious_ hour of asscrack-of-dawn o'clock? I was sleeping.”

 

"I couldn't sleep," he said, by way of apology.

 

"That's always tricky. You try counting?"

 

"Yeah, I tried just about everything."

 

She hummed and they fell into silence.

 

"That's..." He started and stopped, closed his eyes, knocked his head against the metal pole. "That's not the only reason I called."

 

She didn't say anything, and he took it as his cue to continue, wishing he hadn't thrown the Snickers bar away. He'd like to have something to cram into his mouth that wasn't his foot.

 

“You didn't have to call me," she said, before he could speak again. Her voice was a little dreamy, a little far-away. "Really. I didn't have any expectations. I mean, I wanted you to, but I wasn't going to hold you to it."

 

"I know, but I am, so, just—just hear me out, okay?"

 

There was a rustle. Bed sheets.

 

He took a breath.

 

"I can't stop thinking about you. So I wanted you to know. That I think about you all the time— and I don't know—what that means, but I think it means I might be—in love with you? But I don't know. I don't know if that's an—okay thing. If that's what should happen, and it's really no good for you or me because I'm not the person you want. I can't be that person."

 

"Well, how do you know?"

 

"What?"

 

"That you can't be that person. How do you know?" Her voice was even and calm, and Sam tried to figure what to say.

 

"Look, just trust me. I haven't had much luck with people I love. They get hurt because of me. Bad things happen to them, I let them down. It's better that you find someone else."

 

"I don't want anybody else."

 

His heart started hammering up into his throat.

 

"I don't," she repeated firmly. "I don't want anybody else. Or anybody less, or anybody bigger. I've tried to get over you, I've tried to push you to the back burner, but I can't. I can't forget you and I don't want to—"

 

She trailed away.

 

"I'm not going to find what I'm looking for here, Sam. It's never going to come from here, and I can't get away unless it's with you. You're the only one who could make me brave enough to leave."

 

"That's not true," he found himself whispering. "That's not true at all and you know it. You can do whatever you want. Leave that town. Get out of there, I'm serious. Go find somebody to make you happy. I don't want you to wait at that counter anymore."

 

She laughed, tired and lonesome.

 

"Don't you think I'd have left if I could? I can't. I'm a real coward, Sam. I don't know how to leave this place.” Her voice cracked a little with sleep and he heard her rearranging herself on her sheets. “What if it's not everything I want? What if I leave and it's too much? I'm just a small town girl. I've never been anywhere big or done anything big."

 

"It won't be like that. Do you even hear yourself? Lily, I knew you for barely a night and I knew - I knew you were more than that town. You need more than that town and you can do it. I'm serious. Don't you want more than the orchard? More than sitting at your dad's store?"

 

"I don't know anything else. That's my whole life, and if I leave it, how do I know that I'm going to find what I'm looking for? I won't, Sam, because I already found it, and—"

 

"And?"

 

"And he could only stay for a dance."

 

"Lily—Lily, you don't want me," he said. He drifted sideways to the plastic bench that faced the parking lot and sagged into it. "You don't want me. You think you do but you don't."

 

"What's bigger or crazier than that? Than—falling in love? Love changes everything and it changes people, it—it touches everything. When I met you I knew—a lot of things for the first time in my life, and I knew that I was afraid of leaving Greenacre, but I also knew if you had asked me to come with you I would have left right then. If I ever had an excuse to get out of this place, that's what it would be. To be with someone I love."

 

"How can you say that when you barely know me? You don't know what I've done and how things have ended up for other people I love."

 

"Everyone's a little terrible, Sam."

 

"...I wish I could explain it to you. I really do."

 

They went quiet, a mutual silence. He imagined her sitting in the dark, worrying her lip. Imagined her imagining him.

 

"Where are you?" she asked, very quietly, and he looked up past the awning towards the stars.

 

"Hartman. Kentucky."

 

"What's it like?"

 

"Peaceful," he said, after a minute.

 

"What's in Hartman?" There was a wistful timbre to her voice. Childish and curious. Almost jealous.

 

"A job."

 

"Mm.” Another pause; he heard her yawn. “What do you do?"

 

"You wouldn't believe me even if I told you." It sort of slipped out of his mouth without him meaning it to. He knew he should have lied, said something easy, but she'd already seen right through him when they met. Maybe it was because he wanted her to ask him.

 

"I don't know. I believe some pretty unbelievable things," she murmured, with a sort of half-laugh in the back of her throat, and when he closed his eyes he could imagine her beside him, the two of them leaning against the bench, side to side.

 

He realized he wanted to tell her. He wanted her to know.

 

"I hunt. My brother and Cas and I. We're hunters. We hunt bad things."

 

"Like. The FBI?"

 

"No. We don't hunt people. Although—sometimes we _pretend_ to be FBI, or. Journalists. Or whatever else we need to get the job done."

 

Her lack of words made him infinitely nervous.

 

"Bad things,” she said, after a minute. “You hunt bad things...then why did you ask about Riverlanders?"

 

"We think it's a bad thing. Well, Dean does. I don't know anymore...I don't...it's so weird."

 

For a while they went quiet again, and he listened to her breathing, soft and gentle on the other end. He closed his eyes—he thought, stupid as it might have been, cliché-romance-novel as it was, that he'd be content to hear her breathe on the other end of a phone all night.

 

"Sam?"

 

"Yeah?"

 

She started to say something, and stopped, and started again, clearing her throat.

 

"I wish that had made me stop loving you." Her voice was quiet and thick, like she was about to cry. "I really wish it had, and I'm sorry if that's what you wanted. But I do—I really think I do love you, and I want to know all about you, and I wish..."

 

"Me too. Please don't think that I don't, because I do, Lily, I—haven't felt this way about anyone in a long time. I had someone when I was a lot younger, and she..."

 

He swallowed.

 

"Sometimes the bad things, they get the people we love, and there's not a lot we can do to stop it, and I don't want that to happen to you. It would kill me if you got mixed up in whatever this is. This thing waking up and mixing everybody around. I mean—you should see my brother and Cas. They're going crazy half the time."

 

He stopped talking and was consumed with thought for a long time, a long and starry time, until she spoke again.

 

"Sam?"

 

He breathed. Took the chance.

 

"Lily, what you said—about nothing being bigger and crazier than love, do you really mean that? Do you really think that it can—change things?"

 

"Love can do plenty," she said, after a minute. "Makes big peaches. Makes me miss you so desperate some days I think I'm drowning. It turned a catfish into a man, didn't it? If you're lookin' out for those stories." She laughed lightly.

 

"Why the catfish? Why is it always a catfish, Lily?"

 

"Sam, if my mama hears me talkin' about that she'll kill me," she whispered.

 

"Lily, I think something is happening. With my brother. With Cas. I think it's got something to do with all this. Everything that's happened, all the timing, it's...it's like everything is revolving around them, or they're revolving around it...and we were in Iowa, and—maybe it has to do with me, too. I don't know." He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don't know.”

 

"Catfish are mud animals," she said, so quietly he had to strain to hear. As if she were reading out of a textbook, her voice low and thin. "Dirty things. Bottom feeders, Sam. They eat the dead. They scavenge and pick off the bones at the bottom."

 

"Hungry things."

 

"I never heard the whole thing," she said, the same defense she'd used in that cafe, her automatic and fearful response. “I never knew the whole story.”

 

"Do you know—how it ends?"

 

"All the bits and pieces." Lily's voice drifted through the phone, dreamlike. "That's all I ever got. Never a story, never—never a beginning or a middle or an end...the girl who swallowed stones because she loved a star, and...the princess and her comb...and the man who kept his wife in a house by the river...and the star and the catfish...there was always the catfish..."

 

"How does it end? Lily, I have to know how it ends."

 

"It hasn't yet," she whispered. “I don't think it's ended yet.”

 

"Yet?"

 

"No. Not yet. I never heard the ending, Sam. Just the pieces."

 

"I need to know—” His voice hit sharpness but he pulled it down. Too early in the morning dusk for frustration. “I need to know what this—story wants with us. It's driving us all crazy.”

 

"Sam, I think it's all the same story.”

 

Her voice had suddenly gone gossamer, as if she were remembering a dream. As if she were telling him a bedtime story.

 

"The same—?"

 

"Over and over. The girl who swallowed the stones, the princess, the catfish. Maybe it's just been ending wrong. I don't know. The way—the way I've heard the Riverlanders talk, they made it seem—like they always end sad. They hurt each other or lose each other. They drown each other, but the catfish—maybe the catfish can make it all end alright. Someday."

 

"I think...I think you're right."

 

"Course I'm right, Sam," she said, laughing. "I'm right about everything."

 

"Not everything. Not me."

 

"Oh, especially you."

 

He lost himself in the pirouette of her voice all over again. Like a music box. Like a ballerina. The most beautiful, precious thing.

 

“You tired yet, Sam?” she asked, gently.

 

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “Yeah. I think I can sleep now.”

 

“Good,” she whispered.

 

“Lily, I’m not asking you to wait for me, okay, but maybe—if this all turns out…if things end up okay—”

 

She shushed him into a stop.

 

“You know where I’ll be,” she said, and he nodded.

 

He knew. Looking out the window of her daddy’s store, her hair tied up. He’d reach out and tug on her ponytail. She’d look up, she’d see him standing there – her face would erupt into a brilliant smile. She’d climb up over the counter in a rush to touch him, he’d swing her up in his arms, he’d kiss her for every day he couldn’t, he’d feel her arms wrap around his neck, he’d take her hair down, bury his fingers in it, kiss her again. Crazy. Big.

 

Ask her to come away with him.

 

She’d say yes, but only if he took her to Jackson.

 

“Go to sleep, baby doll,” she said, breaking his thoughts.

 

He didn’t want to hang up.

 

“I won’t forget you.”

 

“So far so good,” she teased.

 

* * *

 

They met with David one last time before they left, to tie up the loose ends and discuss the last of it. Cas relayed his strange story and insisted that the spirit of Sandra Eadie was at rest, but David would stay behind a few days anyway to make sure.

 

“Thank you for your help, boys,” he said sincerely, his tired eyes slowly moving over them. He smiled to himself at the sight of the more relaxed posture Dean and Cas carried. Dean’s arm around the back of Cas’ chair, loose and easy, like it had belonged there all along.

 

On the way out of the restaurant David grabbed Dean’s arm, and the hunter turned with a look of confusion. David stared squarely into his face.

 

“I’m about to give you the best advice anyone’s ever gonna give you,” he said, his fingers still gripping the sleeve at Dean’s elbow. His wiry eyebrows knit together. “Quit. Quit while you’re ahead. Get outta this business while you’ve got people to get out of it with.”

 

“I can’t do that,” Dean said, and David shook his head, sighing.

 

“Son, look at me. I’m a miserable poor fool, and I’m tired. I’m tired as hell of this game. You don’t want to be me someday. You don’t want to have to be calling young men for help. You got a ripe opportunity to settle down. For the sake of us who don’t have anyone—do it.”

 

Dean pressed his mouth together and clapped David on the shoulder.

 

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

 

“I’m serious. You go out there, you find yourself a house. Build one if you’ve got to, but don’t waste what you’ve got. You’ve got people you could lose if you keep in this. They could lose you. Quit while you’re ahead. Don’t be me. Be anything but me.”

 

“You take care of yourself, David,” Dean murmured, holding his hand out for the older hunter to take. They shook. “You call if you ever need anything.”

 

“I will,” David smiled. “I just hope you got somewhere else to be when I do.”


	9. Memphis, TN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I could tell you stories like the government tells lies; oh, but no one listens anymore.”

Sam and Dean were done with small towns, it seemed. They fought over where to go next; Sam insisted that it didn’t matter where they went, they just had to keep it up.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Cas had said thoughtfully. “It always manages to find _us_ no matter where we go.”

 

This detail did not please Dean. After nearly losing Cas in the river he was shaken and wary, unwilling to run headlong into anything else strange.

 

“I just want to go to a real bar, okay? Sleep in a motel I know hasn’t had a vacancy for fifty years. Have a drink, see people without anything weird on their hands,” Dean griped, following the ribbon of highway in front of him.

 

By Dean’s reckoning, the bigger the city, the smaller the chance of getting caught up in it all. He wasn’t particularly reassured by Cas’ constant soothing or Sam’s ‘go for it’ attitude. He felt itchy and restless and strange and protective. He wanted to keep them close and keep the crazy out. For the first time in a long time, Dean didn’t want anything to do with a case.

 

“We’ve followed it this far, Dean,” Sam said when they stopped for gas in some nowhere in-between town. They’d left Kentucky behind and were about to cross the river again. “No sense in stopping now.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Dean replied, voice thick with sarcasm. “Were you not around when Cas nearly _drowned_ , or was that just me?”

 

“I know, but Dean – I’m just saying. Promise me we’ll see this through.”

 

“I don’t know, Sammy, alright? This is some bad mojo. I don’t have a good feeling about it. I haven't felt good about it since it _started_.”

 

“Cas told you it was okay. He’s fine. Sandra didn’t hurt him – she just wanted to talk to him, right? I don’t think it’s as bad as you think it is.”

 

“Cas just became human. I don’t think he’s really one to be talking,” Dean snapped, shoving the pump back into its cradle, eyes hard.

 

“That’s not fair and you know it,” Sam insisted. “He’s like us now, Dean, that's all.”

 

“I just need a break, Sam! Jesus.”

 

Without another word he slung himself back into the car and revved the engine, waiting for Cas to come out of the attached convenience store.

 

Sam rubbed his forehead. It would all be right in the end, he told himself. If Lily or Sugar or Mattie or any of them were worth believing, it would all be right in the end.

 

He just had to make sure they got there.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They decided on Memphis. Close enough to the river for Cas and Sam, and big enough to suit Dean.

 

“Cas has never seen Graceland,” Dean joked. “You do know who Elvis Presley is, right?”

 

He smiled, relieved to be amidst what he called _real_ civilization, as if the hundreds of miles prior didn’t count. The skyline rose above the crawling Mississippi as they crossed the border into Tennessee, gleaming silver in the sun.

 

“I’ve heard of him, yes,” Cas said softly from the passenger seat, squeezing Dean’s hand where it rested on the inside of his thigh, fingers curled to fit against the curve of his leg. “Considered the biggest threat to providence of the twentieth century, I believe.”

 

Dean grinned at the joke and Sam chuckled.

 

“You know he toured with Johnny Cash. Like – all those talented people knew each other.”

 

“The good ol’ man in black,” Dean drawled, looking for a motel off the highway. There were a million to pick from, much to his delight.

 

Sam pressed his mouth into the palm of his hand, looking out over the water, his eyes secreting something away.

 

* * *

 

Dean drove them into the city for dinner, going on and on about the music scene and the bars and the whole feel of it. He’d been to Memphis before, plenty of times. It was a good midway city, and he liked it more every time he found himself back there.

 

Under his guidance they decided to go bar hopping, slipping in and out of the crowded, smoky rooms while blues guitar thrummed in the background of each one. Dean was happy and at ease, convinced there wouldn’t be a whiff of trouble. Nobody gave a damn about the river or any of that in Memphis. They cared about Gibson guitars and Elvis Presley and cold beer for hot late-summer nights.

 

Cas gave him strange and heavy-lidded looks all night, pressing himself against his side or behind him, hands wandering into the front pockets of his jeans.

 

“You’re in a good mood,” Cas observed lightly, in the fifth bar that night, fiddling with the cap from his beer bottle. Dean swayed, Cas’ body rocking with him; the heavy bass line of the music made the air vibrate. He leaned back against Dean’s chest, the hunter’s arms looped around his waist and his mouth busy just above the collar of his t-shirt. In the dark and sooty corner where the dim neon lights didn't quite reach, no one could see them.

 

Dean’s hands moved, sliding down, thumbs grazing his hipbones through the thin material of his shirt.

 

“I’m crazy about you.”

 

“I can tell,” Cas chuckled, moving his shoulder slightly back to kiss him. Dean’s eyes shut and he hooked his thumbs through Cas’ belt loops, kissing him soft and sweetly, both of them hesitating to do much more. Cas stroked the backs of his hands and rolled his head back against Dean’s shoulder, drifting with him to the music, letting it carry them like boats on the current.

 

After a few minutes, Sam returned from the bar with another round, and they broke a part a little to join him, but Dean still remained at Cas’ back, hand wandering from his hips to his waist and up his side, stroking, and then back down again.

 

They talked about baseball scores, and Sam and Dean lost themselves quoting some movie, cutting up as they tried to mimic accents. Cas didn’t get the jokes, but laughed along with them, so infinitely pleased to be a part of it that the lack of context didn’t bother him at all.

 

It was alright. Settled and non-threatening.

 

After a time they decided to go, find somewhere else to light for a while longer before turning in, and as they walked to the corner to cross the street towards the Impala, Sam went ahead, hands in his pockets. It was clear in the lines of his back that his thoughts were meandering.

 

“You think Sammy’s okay?” Dean said, his arm slung around Cas’ shoulders, Cas’ around his back, hand tucked possessively into his back pocket.

 

“He does seem a little off,” Cas said, watching his friend’s back.

 

“He’s been moody all night and he won’t look at anyone but us. I hope it’s not that girl.”

 

“Lily,” Cas said, remembering. Lily Francis. His memory fished up the image of Sam stooping to kiss her, the way her hand had trailed against his face as if it were yesterday. How long had it been, really? Weeks.

 

“Whatever,” Dean continued, waving his free hand. “It’s bad news to get all hung up on her, and he knows it. Nobody will walk out of it not getting hurt.”

 

“I don’t see what’s wrong with it. If Sam wants to have a relationship with her, why not?”

 

“Because she doesn’t fit with the way we do things. What’s she gonna do? Wait for him?”

 

“You never know,” Cas said, distantly, still watching Sam. “I think you’d be surprised what people are willing to wait for.”

 

“I’m not saying Sammy’s not worth waiting for—he is,” Dean said, stressing it, shaking his head. “I just don’t like knowing how their story's gonna end.”

 

“How?” Cas asked, looking up at Dean as they came to a stop by the corner.

 

“Sad,” Dean replied, squeezing his shoulders.

 

* * *

 

They weren’t the only ones on the corner, and Dean snickered as they crossed the street, passing the girls with their high skirts and even higher heels. Their heavy-eye shadow made them look semi-alien in the red glow of the traffic light.

 

“Ladies,” he said, smiling, nodding at them as they went by, and a few of them looked up and flashed him broad grins.

 

“You have a good night, baby!” one of them called in her sticky sweet voice, and Dean laughed, head tipped back, falling into step beside Cas. Sam was already halfway across the street. There were more girls on the other side, and they glanced through their fake lashes, their cigarettes held between their manicured fingers.

 

“Sammy, I think you’ve got an admirer,” Dean said, grinning, as they caught up with him, noting the way one of the women – a blonde – was watching his brother intently.

 

She sized Sam up and then flicked her eyes to Dean and Cas, her face suddenly blossoming into some unreadable expression. She turned to her red-haired friend, a nervous looking woman, and then stepped away from the circle to stare at Sam more easily.

 

“Great,” Sam sighed.

 

“Hey!” came the call, and Sam groaned. Dean stifled his laughter in Cas’ shoulder as they hovered by the car.

 

“Not interested!” Sam called back, and she lifted her hand and waved at him frantically.

 

Sam’s shoulders slumped. “No thank you!” he yelled again, over the sidewalk, and the girl pressed her bright pink lips tightly together and shook her head, waving him over more forcefully, her eyes beseeching.

 

When Sam didn’t move, focused on opening the Impala's door, she looked around and hastily jogged away from the corner, towards the car. She pulled the netted sleeves of her shirt over her hands as she ran on her teetering shoes, her skirt riding up a little and showing off the top of her thigh over her pale-purple stockings. She was a gaudy mess, all mismatched bright colors and ratty hair piled high on her head, smeared mascara and fake gemstones missing from each of her earrings.

 

“Really, I don’t want anything,” Sam said weakly, turning to her.

 

She shook her head, her eyes wide.

 

“Not you! All of you!” she said, catching her breath, staring between the three of them.

 

“Okay, yeah, no, we’re _really_ not interested—”

 

“Shut up, I’m not trying to get your money!” she squawked, waving her hands in front of her face. “I’m trying to tell you I _know_ you!”

 

Dean’s stomach dropped before she even said it.

 

“Y'all are late!” she said, smoothing down her skirt. Her breath was a little hoarse. “Real late – I was expectin’ you a week ago! Lord Almighty, I'm glad I caught you—”

 

“I’m sorry, what?” Dean said in a low growl under his breath, and Cas put a hand on his middle, keeping him from starting at her.

 

“I’m afraid we don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam said, covering up his brother’s bristling.

 

Castiel looked away from Dean and studied her. She looked confused, shifting on her heels and staring at them.

 

She made some exasperated sound.

 

“Y'all don’t know.” She continued to pass her eyes over them. “Oh, brother. Y'all still don’t _know_?”

 

Before they could answer, she raked her hand through the poofy front of her bleached-blonde hair and groaned.

 

“Well, guess it can’t be helped.”

 

“What are you on? Are you high, lady?” Dean snapped, and she let her hand thwack at her side.

 

“ _Don’t_ you sass me!” she scolded, lifting her finger to jab at the air in front of Dean. “I’m here to play the shepherd but I ain't gonna be sassed while I do it!”

 

“You’re gonna tell us what the hell you’re talking about and tell us _now_ ,” Dean said, voice strained, despite Cas' attempts to calm him.

 

“You take that attitude down to Grand-mère and she’ll turn you right out! She ain't got no time for any of that,” the girl insisted. “Grand-mère don’t let nobody walk over her, whether you need that prayer book or not!”

 

On the pattering street noisy with murmuring women and the click of high heels, the occasional dry rush of a car passing by, it seemed the entire universe went silent for a blinking instant at the drop of that word— _the book._

 

“Woah, woah, woah,” Sam said. “What are you saying? Do you—do you _know_ where the book is?”

 

Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Dean had gone slightly pale, and was staring at her now not so much with irritation but with trepidation. Cas' hand had snaked around his and was clutching it tightly.

 

“Now, I can’t talk about all that here – much too lecherous – but you come home with me, and I’ll fix Low Blood Sugar here a pan of somethin',” the woman said, jerking her thumb at Dean. She didn't seem to have noticed the way he'd gone so still, the way they'd all gone still; she was all business, all distraction and moving hands. “I’ll try to give you what I can, as long as it’s in the rules.”

 

“Do you know where the book is?” Cas repeated, his voice glassy.

 

“You three got to learn to stop askin' so many questions,” she said, by way of an answer.

 

 

* * *

 

Though Dean had to be coaxed, they followed her to her apartment a few blocks away.

 

Her name was Celeste. At least, that was the name that she gave them, and when she smiled her Day-Glo pink lipstick made her teeth seem unnaturally white. Her face was slightly rounded – puffy from poor nutrition. Her name was Celeste, she said, and she knew them. Had been waiting for them for some time.

 

She prattled on, all the way up the rattling metal stairs, about how she’d been cleaning her apartment every day waiting for them, and she’d tried to guess what they’d like to eat but kept whatever she'd bought because she couldn’t afford to buy more.

 

She said this all with a laugh, despite Sam and Cas’ looks of sympathy. She was very skinny, and her legs looked unsteady sometimes as she traipsed along in her heels and thigh-highs, not a care in the world, never tripping even when she looked like she was about to.

 

They came to the top floor of her complex, a shady, grubby building, and she led them up to her door, fidgeting around in her bra for her keys. She pulled a roll of bills out and then tucked them back in, unlocking the door and shoving her shoulder into it.

 

“It sticks in the humidity!” she said cheerfully, wedging it open, finally.

 

She tumbled in and they followed, still rattled by the encounter. It wasn’t every day they were flagged down by hookers and invited to dinner—but then again, all manner of strange folk had been inviting them to dinner lately, and nothing about anything seemed everyday.

 

The three men paused in her crowded and claustrophobic front hall while she vanished into the kitchen. The place was stiflingly small, and dark—thin streetlamp light under the drowning sunset crept in small strips through the crooked blinds; a television sat on a cardboard box, facing a couch that had seen better days; a single photograph, of a family, in a square frame too tiny for the wall on which it hung, was the only decoration. Two mismatched lamps. Past the kitchen, which was hidden by a corner of wall, the hall stretched on just a little ways, opening into what looked like a cracked and shabby bathroom, and a bedroom.

 

As they passed it, wandering into the kitchen after her, Cas saw the one bare mattress, not even a headboard to hold it up to any standard, a grimy window, a bureau stacked with hatboxes full of lingerie. A Bible on the Ikea nightstand. It was a sad room. It was a sad place. She seemed much too bright for it all.

 

She fluttered around her dining room in the shoebox of the apartment. There was a sagging chair and a loveseat and a dinette crammed in one corner of the kitchen.

 

She turned around from the cupboard she was digging through, shaking a box of Hamburger Helper at them.

 

“Y'all like this? This alright?”

 

“Um,” Sam said, in a detached way, and she clucked in disapproval. She set the box on the counter and teetered across the webbed tile, grabbed Sam’s arm and then Cas’, and pushed them towards the table.

 

“Sit! Don’t hover! Sit!” She reached out to pull Dean next, and he started away before she could.

 

She eyed him and smiled secretly. He half expected her to say, _I like you. You’ve got moxie,_ or something equally ridiculous.

 

They did as they were told, and she tottered to the tiny living room and took her shoes off, flexing her toes and smiling. She grabbed a tie from somewhere unseen and slung her white-blonde frizzy mane up over her shoulders, out of the way, the better to cook. She pulled off her netted top as well, folding it on the chair.

 

It was then that they saw it, as she came back in and started up the water on the stove, when her back was to them.

 

Through the wide window of her halter top they could see the huge nebulous tattoo stretching over her shoulders and extending down, past her shirt, presumably all the way down her back. A night sky, it seemed, so rich and textured with indigos and purples and greens, golden flecks of starlight and silver-white moons, that it was almost hard to believe that it rested on her skin at all. One star—one star in particular—rested over the knob of spine where her vertebrae met her neck; its four points stretched out, enveloping, like arms embracing the universe below them. The top of it vanished up into her hairline, as if piercing the base of her skull.

 

“That’s some ink you’ve got there,” Dean said, honestly impressed by the way the colors shifted and swirled as she moved.

 

There was the greasy smell of cheap hamburger sizzling and she laughed.

 

“Thank you, baby,” she replied, in her high, honeyed voice. “It’s my own personal universe!”

 

The universe, indeed. And on the back of a Memphis prostitute.

 

He could see one of her ribs through her shirt, and her shoulder-blades pushed sharply through the skin of her back, but the tattoo was so magnificent he couldn’t call her anything other than beautiful.

 

And she was, on closer examination, one of the most beautiful girls Dean had ever come across. Her nose was slightly crooked, but her smile was brilliant; she was a wreck, sallow-skinned and gaunt, too-big teeth, small ears, a clavicle that looked like it could slice butter—but she was beautiful. It was her demeanor, the happiness in every angle of her body. It made her gorgeous.

 

She pushed the meat around in her skillet. Of all the things she could have been doing, she was cooking for them, giving them what little she had.

 

She had probably worked every night that week, Dean thought, entranced by the movement of the universe on her back. She probably had to, just to afford the place she was living in, and she was insisting on feeding them. He stared at her bones, concerned. It looked like the tattoos, the supernovae, were eating her alive, taking up every square inch she had to offer, sucking her dry.

 

But that wasn’t it at all, he realized.

 

She had to have been big enough for the universe to fit on her shoulders. And if that were true, then the slight, drawn young woman in front of him was enormous.

 

“How old are you?” Cas asked, brow furrowed in thought.

 

“Twenty-eight!” she chirped, and Sam’s eyes widened. She was far younger than she looked. “The makeup makes us look older than we are. But I try! Do all that anti-wrinkle nonsense, you know. Moisturize!”

 

Soon she was boiling the noodles and stirring them occasionally, barefoot in her purple hose and pleather skirt.

 

“You know, you don’t have to cook for us,” Dean said, breaking the silence with what they'd all been thinking to begin with, and she turned and looked at him over her blue-inked shoulder.

 

“Nonsense,” she said, laughing. “Daddy always said feedin’ someone else was more important than feedin’ yourself. I know it ain’t much, but I reckon if I were a catfish I’d just throw myself on your plates!”

 

Dean sank back into contemplative silence.

 

A heavy clock left over from the eighties ticked on the window sill, and the pan sizzled.

 

“You said you were waiting for us,” Sam said. “How did you know?”

 

“Oh, just the dreams,” she said, nonchalant, cocking out her hip as she stirred the hamburger in the pan. “Strange dreams. Nothin' more'n what I'm used to, of course, but more important this time round. Dreams about all kinds of people, but mostly you three and Grand-mère. She tells me all the rules.”

 

“Rules?” Cas said, looking between Dean and Sam. Both were slightly pale and listening intently.

 

“What I can and can’t say. Y'see, it was supposed to go one of two ways – you’d know everythin', and I’d give y'all time to collect your heads before you went down to the Big Easy. Or, we have ourselves a bit of a come-to-Jesus.”

 

“What does New Orleans have to do with any of this?” Dean asked, and Celeste giggled. He found that he didn’t resent her anymore. He just wanted answers.

 

“Oh,” she said, moving the pot of boiling water to the sink to drain. “Just about everything!”

 

* * *

 

Celeste finished making up the food and divvied it out onto plates, heaping it all onto three and leaving only a spare bit for herself. Cas stood to help her carry them to the miniscule and sagging table, but she waved him back to his seat, balancing them expertly.

 

“Used to wait tables!” she said, smiling, setting them down, throwing a heap of silverware into the center. She slipped down into the chair beside Sam and sighed. She encouraged them to eat with a wave of her hands and her lacquered nails, and put her chin in the palm of her slim hand.

 

“Now, we’re gonna have a little talk,” she said. “The kind of talk where y'all don’t ask so many questions, alright? I promise to tell you everything I’m allowed to.”

 

They looked at each other and then at her, more focused on the slim young woman than the food she'd made, and she took a deep breath.

 

“When y'all leave here, you head for New Orleans. You're gonna be looking for a bokor woman. You know, voudon. Most everyone calls her Madame Olivia, full name Olivia Delacroix, and you’d be wise to show her the utmost respect. She's a very important woman, and she’s got a lot of important things in her possession, includin’ that book y'all are after.”

 

“She has the book? This woman – are you sure?” Dean breathed, and Celeste gave him a labored look of love.

 

“Don’t make me ask you again to eat, alright? You poor babies have been travelin’ a long time. Long, long time, bless your sweet souls,” she murmured, thoughtfully. “Anyway, she’s expectin' y'all. Air’s cracklin’ with things. Big things.”

 

She nodded to herself, tapping her nails on the table. She got up to fix herself a cup of coffee, leaving her food untouched.

 

The trio looked at one another, all of them pale. Here it was—a location, a name, something more real and tangible than anyone else on the road had given them. Practical directions to the doorstep of the thing they'd been looking for. Perhaps in an earlier place they'd have been excited at the prospect—but now, after the Ozarks, after the darkness they'd been walking through, the reaper and the ghost and the idea that perhaps it wasn't so grand, it wasn't so bright after all—now it loomed, and none of them quite knew what to make of it, now that it was so very suddenly so near to them.

 

Celeste came back to the table, taking a long drink.

 

“You know,” she said, sitting back down and fixing Dean with a look, “you gave that poor little girl at the cantina a real turn.”

 

Sam and Cas looked at her; Dean choked on his food, beating his fist against his chest. Celeste watched him, eyebrow raised.

 

“She was a mess for days, but she’s alright now. She’s light as a feather; hope floats, and all that.”

 

She watched Dean swallow and look up at her, eyes watering.

 

“How do you know about that?”

 

“Dreams.” She shrugged. “Strange dreams. Like movies. Sometimes I’m ahead of y'all, I think – I didn’t realize you'd stayed at Mattie’s so long. Wasn’t expecting Sugar to invite you in either, but she did. She’s such a sweetheart. I’d like to go see her sometime, have a nice round chat with her.”

 

“So you’ve been seeing us? This whole time?” Cas asked, marveling. She shrugged again; the tips, the edges of the universe on the rounds of her bony shoulders rolled with her.

 

“Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot; depends on what I need to know. So if you’re wondering, no—I haven’t seen _everything._ ”

 

She took a shy sip of her coffee and then replaced it on the table, twirling the spoon.

 

“Somebody’s gotta look out for you three. You think the world was gonna to let you do all this alone? No. Somebody needed to look after you all. Make sure y'all were gettin' where you were supposed to. Keeping track.

 

It was real scary at first. I didn’t like it – but then I realized how important it was. How important _I_ was, I guess. Though I ain't one for the grandiose. I kept thinkin', when it got a little much, that without me y'all might not see this to the end, and you have to know—”

 

She paused to lean over the table, her bony elbow resting on its edge, and her loose fist hovering between them all, like a gavel ready to fall.

 

“Y'all have to know _how important it is_ that y'all see it through to the end. That you get down there and you find that book and you hear what the world's tryin' to tell you.”

 

“So it is—it is,” Sam said, softly, a little fearfully, “it _is_...about us. Or it's something to do with us.”

 

Celeste smiled, gentle. Neutral. In a way that made no promises and answered neither yea nor nay.

 

“My daddy always says the big pieces were just a lot of little ones,” she said instead. “I figure I’m just another piece makin' sure the wheel turns, makin' sure y'all don’t give up and throw a wrench in it.”

 

She looked up timidly, and then smiled. Despite her admonishment that they eat, none of them were doing very well at it. The meal was steaming out untouched.

 

“So strange havin' y'all here after watchin' you so long. You know, it’s so exciting,” she whispered, in the wake of their staring silence. “It really is. You’ve all done so well. You’ve come so far and learned all the lessons.”

 

Dean and Cas looked up at her, and she met their eyes in turn.

 

“Even if you don’t know that you have. You really have done so well. Better than I ever hoped, and everyone’s rooting for you. It makes me so excited. It makes me feel like the first day of school or somethin’. The river fought you, and you fought it a little, but it was just – it was just the way things fight before settling.”

 

She paused a moment, took a deep breath; she ran her lacquered nails under her lower lip. Her oxygen trembled on her tongue.

 

“I'm gonna give y'all the advice nobody else has. Somethin' I think y'all need to hear. You’re so close to the end, so promise me you'll listen. Promise me you won’t give up.”

 

Her eyes were imploring and devoted, and they listened attentively, like children to a Sunday school minister, or siblings to a mother, and she met all their gazes in turn, all her excited demeanor gone. She was sincere, now. Sincere and strange at the table with them.

 

“Don’t give up,” she said, her voice falling even lower still. “You were born storytellers, all three of you. You been tellin’ stories from the moment you came to be. This is the most important one yet, so don’t stop. Don’t let the fear get you. It’s hard to look something this old in the face, I know. It's hard to be alright with somethin' so ancient callin' your name. Y'all know that already. It’s somethin’ mighty big and scary, but you’re the best of us. Lean on each other. Fill up the empty spots for each other. You're the best of all of us. Know that.”

 

Her eyes went soft, her face gentle. She looked wise beyond any years, and they regarded her with something close to awe, the girl with the universe on her back, expanding over her entire body, spreading every day.

 

(She had read that somewhere, when she was young. That the universe would grow forever. She had loved that idea. Gotten her first tattoo at seventeen and hadn’t stopped since.

 

The stars and nebulas and galaxies held between her shoulders.

 

She’d had a client who had really admired it. Spent a good hour tracing the contours of her back, the clouds and sprays of constellations, the shimmering colors blending and melting into one another. He’d been an English teacher and had smiled at her as he passed his hand over her skin.

 

“Walt Whitman called himself a cosmos. That’s how he’d introduce himself,” he’d said, and she’d laughed, and the laugh had been beautiful and insatiable.

 

Celeste. Cosmos.)

 

“I’ve been doing this job for a while,” she said, breaking the silence. They listened, unable to do anything else, enraptured. “I see all the gory parts of people. Love them in those gory ways everyone seems so ashamed of.”

 

She didn’t bother to look at their faces. She knew that they were familiar with what she was talking about.

 

“Everyone’s got emptiness. That empty spot where the love should go. You just have to find the piece that fits right. Could be crazy. Could be what you least expect, but love doesn’t mind those things. It'll twist itself up and fit anywhere it can. That’s all life is, really. That’s the big secret. And when you find that piece?”

 

She held up her hands, and they all stared at her. She opened and closed her hands, like fireflies blinking at each other—and the stars tattooed there in her palms, as entirely unsurprising as sunrise itself, flashed as well.

 

“It’s magic.”

 

* * *

 

There was still night to be had in the apartment, and after the long supper she told them with soft insistence to stay awhile, and get some sleep when they liked. She and Cas cleared away the plates, and she made them coffee, brought out a bag of Chips Ahoy, and they sat around her tiny table and talked.

 

The hours soothed away their tension. For at least a while, the notion of any badness she might contain in the lines in her palms was set to rest. She had fed them, she had hosted them, and though they were still wary of the religion she kept and the things she spoke of, they knew—instinctively—that this woman had no evil in her.

 

For a while they filled in blanks for her, the things she hadn't seen in her dreams. She told them, in turn, that she'd been dreaming ever since she was a girl, seeing things that hadn't come true yet, but always did, in time. While she talked of her visions Sam watched her face, felt the twist in his gut in reminder that once, he'd had visions too. He wondered if there were any sick blood in her, if any of it beat in parallel through their veins. Somehow, he felt that she was luckier than that.

 

Eventually the inevitable quiet of the small of night fell, and she told them to sleep, if they liked, for a few hours before the time came to move on from the towering presence of the big city. And so they did—Celeste pulled out a spare mattress from beneath her own, and Sam lay down there, on the floor beside her bed; Dean and Cas made themselves a nest of blankets on the sagging couch, and curled up there, and the apartment drifted into silence save for the gentle ticking of the clock in the kitchen.

 

Cas rested on Dean's chest, small enough in body to fit there, and together they lay in the dark, watching headlights move across the ceiling, reflected up from the crooked shades. They didn't speak. There was a drowsy sort of contentment here, as if they'd stepped, for a moment, back through the veil, and any darkness looming ahead of them had been detached, like a bone popping from a socket. Castiel's fingertips rested on Dean's collarbone through the fabric of his shirt, and he caressed the jut of it, small circles in the deepening dusk.

 

Perhaps they slept, the four of them in their separate rooms, if only a little, their heads too full of the idea of New Orleans to give them much rest. Whether or not they did, they woke in the last dark remnants before morning, and Dean and Castiel watched the light steal into the little grey apartment and paint the walls a faded, dusty orange.

 

It was nearing the end of August. And here they were.

 

 

* * *

 

Celeste made them coffee when the sun was up, and not long after, they had gathered near the door. The rush of traffic was loud on the street below and the heat of the morning was already making itself known against the apartment's walls.

 

“Thank you,” Sam said. “For having us. You really didn't have to.”

 

Celeste smiled at him. Her smile, he thought, could light up the entire world.

 

“When you find Olivia you tell her I say hello, alright?” she said, standing on the tiny square of tile in her front entry. They agreed, hesitating, and she gave them another brilliant smile to smooth the worry off of their faces.

 

Her face crumpled momentarily into tears, and Dean, concerned, reached out and touched her arms, and she flung herself forward, buried her face in his shoulder, holding him tightly.

 

“Now I won’t be seein’ you,” she said, trying hard not to let herself get carried away. Her mascara was running and her lipstick was hazy. “I won’t – I won’t be seein’ you for a long time, but promise me you’ll look out at all those faces and put me with them, alright? You look out and put my soul with all those shining lights. I’ll be there. I’ll be watching you.”

 

She pulled back from Dean and grabbed Cas, kissing his cheek. Without thinking, he wrapped his arms around her, feeling her bony shoulders under his arms. The universe hovered just beneath his chin.

 

“I’ll be watching you, too, alright? You’ve got somebody to look after you. You’re not doin’ it alone.”

 

Cas said nothing, but hugged her tighter.

 

She moved to Sam, whose long arms engulfed her, and she laughed in a watery way.

 

“I’m watching over you, sweethearts,” she said, one last final time, as a way of saying goodbye.

 

They thanked her, and they went away, their heads swimming, their ears ringing a little with all they had heard.

 

On the way down the stairs Dean chanced a look back at her apartment. She had just turned around to go inside, back into the melancholy place where she lived and dreamed so brightly, and he caught the spread of the whole universe one last time before the door closed behind her.


	10. Jordan, MS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I have to believe that there are moments of incorruptible beauty upon this earth.”

For the first time since this trip had begun, they didn't consult Yann Olsson's binder of miracles; they'd been given no indication of where to go—only _south_. Only _New Orleans_. And wherever they chose to land, wherever they chose to be their final stop on the road that had been leading them there all along, between there and where they left Memphis on the horizon—that, for the first time, was entirely up to them.

 

It was disconcerting, to be set so adrift.

 

No one spoke much in the car. Cas, as always, leaned forward in the back seat with his chin on the leather between the brothers' heads, and watched the road; Sam looked dazedly out the window, lost in his own thoughts.

 

Dean focused on the edge of the world, and on gaining it, and leaving it behind. He wasn't sure whether or not they should be rushing. He wasn't sure of anything. He thought that, maybe, they could reach New Orleans tonight, if they tried—but he wasn't sure he wanted that. There was a prickling at the base of his spine that had only increased the farther back Memphis dropped, the closer the highway brought them to the Big Easy. It wasn't excitement; it wasn't fear. It was unease, he supposed. Never before had he been quite so _uneasy_.

 

All his life Dean had existed in a state of destinations: a hunt always came with a town, and a victim, and a thing to shoot or stab or burn. Always he had lived in the certainty of pointing the Impala in one direction or another, pointing his life in one direction or another— _kill Yellow-Eyes,_ it had been once. _Save Sam. Kill Lilith. Stop the Apocalypse._ Always, always, a goal. _Save Cas. Save yourself._ And for a time, this past month or so, _find the book. If it's bad, stop it. If it's good—_

 

Well. He'd never quite made it that far.

 

But now the nebulous expanse of land, the separation from New Orleans, from the book. From Amos Porter's prophetics. And the rug, it seemed, had been pulled out from under them, for those remaining hours. Nowhere else to go; no one else to see. Just the long dark road, and the thing at the end of it, and them—three, and free-wheeling, and perhaps a little bit afraid.

 

They drove for hours. Stopped more frequently than was probably necessary. Whenever they pulled over, for gas, for food, to stretch their legs, they kept close together, as if afraid of the distance that might arise should they wander too far. Cas touched Dean whenever they were in the open air, near-constantly. Kept a hand on his knee in the greasy, quiet diner where they stopped for lunch. Kissed his neck while he dawdled near the gas pump. Cast him long and generous and loving, worried looks whenever their eyes happened to meet.

 

The world seemed on edge.

 

They drove until Dean was too anxious to drive anymore, and so—alone, unanchored, and unsure—did they enter the town of Jordan, Mississippi, welcomed by a green government sign proclaiming a population of 489, just as dusk was chasing in from the east.

 

 

* * *

 

The lone convenience store clerk directed them to the only place in town that offered lodging—a tourist trap of sorts, the kind of motel where each room was a separate cabin, so as to offer the most privacy and charge exorbitantly to boot.

 

There was no one to offer them their guest bedrooms in this place, so they went.

 

It was the furthest from the Mississippi they'd been all this time. The river wasn't even visible, even once they'd reached the cabin motel, out in the furthest-flung reaches of the town. It was strange to be so far away from it, Dean thought, to not be able to even hear its current. He'd grown so used to it along the road.

 

He left Sam and Cas in the car to go inside and book one of the cabins; in the gathering dusk he could see they were so spread out across the property that even the loudest of noises from one wouldn't reach any others.

 

A bell jangled as he went inside. A small rack of brochures, most for attractions in cities that were half a day's drive away, took up most of one wall of the miniature place. A tired-looking young man, smoking a cigarette, was leaning over the counter, reading what looked like a skin mag. He didn't even bother to cover it up in any hurry when Dean came in.

 

“Room?” he asked, sounding bored, tamping out his cigarette in an overflowing ash tray.

 

“Double?” Dean asked, and the man nodded, pulling out a register and a pen and dropping them on the counter.

 

As Dean was signing in, and handing over his credit card, he glanced at the young man's hands while he went about charging.

 

No stars in his palms.

 

Dean swallowed and looked away, and when the man was done, he filed his credit card away into his pocket and went back outside.

 

“Cabin Eight,” he said, swinging back into the car. Night was falling quickly and quietly. Not even cicadas were making noise in the trees.

 

The roar of the Impala as they pulled into the motel property, looking for their cabin, was a welcome interruption to the silence.

 

 

* * *

 

They unloaded into Cabin Eight—and found themselves distinctly at a loss for what else to do. There was no one to contact, nothing to examine, nothing to research. Sam tried to find something on the three-channel television, any kind of white noise to keep the anxiety at bay, but twenty minutes of infomercials only served to set them all even more on edge, and quietly he turned it off again.

 

It wasn't too much longer before, under dim lamplight, Sam softly announced that he was going to sleep, and that they should, too. In passing them, sitting on the bed on the opposite end of the tiny cabin from his, he let his hand linger on both of their shoulders, and said a quiet goodnight.

 

One half of the miniature room went dark when Sam turned out his bedside lamp, and Dean and Cas remained sitting on their bed, side by side, staring off at the wainscoting.

 

“Sam's right,” Cas whispered, finally. “We should get some rest.” He got up, moved to the corner to strip off his clothes, and Dean watched him from under his lashes. Observed, dully, the lines of Castiel's body, his very human body, now—not a bit of holy fire left in it. All bone, and marrow to the very core. No lightning in him now. Just a lovely spine, and the curve of his ribcage, and the small dark hairs at the nape of his neck.

 

And a lovely soul thrumming through the whole of him.

 

Not for the first time was Dean struck with just how much, just how absolutely and completely, he loved Castiel. But here it almost held more weight, he thought—it intruded upon the silence and hung upon his shoulders, the truth of it. That he loved him, and it was a huge love, and it didn't frighten him anymore.

 

Quietly, Dean got up, and moved to him; held his hips from behind and settled his face into Castiel's shoulder.

 

Cas paused, pulling his T-shirt off his arms, letting it drop to the floor.

 

“Love you,” Dean said, gruffly, closing his eyes. His arms encircled Cas' waist and pulled him in close to his body.

 

“I know,” Cas whispered. “I love you, too.”

 

“Just. Wanted you to know. Y'know.”

 

“I do know.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Dean.”

 

“Okay.”

 

He let him go; Dean pulled off his jeans there in the corner and then crawled under the covers in his boxers and shirt, waited for Cas to lie down beside him. They were pressed together back-to-chest, Cas' chin in the divot of Dean's shoulder, and Dean stared at the thin rectangle of starlight, the window on the wall.

 

He knew he should sleep. They had another near-day's drive ahead of them tomorrow, to get to New Orleans. He had to be rested. And he _could_ sleep here, he could—with Cas behind him, holding him; with Sam in the opposite bed.

 

They were safe. _He_ was safe. He was with the two people who mattered most to him in the world, and what was safer than that?

 

But he didn't feel like sleeping was an option.

 

Gently he pulled Cas' hands from his waist, and sat up; he heard Cas shift and do the same, woken from whatever small sleep he'd fallen into by his movement.

 

Dean sat on the edge of the bed and held his head in his hands, and tried to breathe, tried to shake off the feeling of foreboding.

 

“Dean,” he heard Cas say, softly, behind him. “You need to try to sleep.”

 

“I can't.”

 

“You need to calm down.”

 

“I _can't_.”

 

Cas shifted towards him, and his thin arms came around him again, and for once Dean let himself be boneless, melt a little backwards. Be held up by him, his strong solid bird-boned body.

 

“What's wrong?” Cas whispered.

 

“I'm just—” Dean let out a long breath. “Worried. I guess.”

 

“About the book.”

 

“Yeah.” His shoulders bowed under Cas' draping weight. “You—you were so sure, Sam was so sure, you were both—so certain that it was good and I wanted to believe you—”

 

“Dean,” Cas murmured, “it still may be.”

 

“I don't see how that's possible.”

 

Cas sighed, long and low.

 

“As much as you don't want to believe it,” he said, after a long and stubborn silent minute, “good things _do_ happen, Dean. Maybe not in your experience, but in mine—well—all of this, all of everything...has led me to you, and to Sam. And you...you are the greatest good.”

 

Dean looked at him, turned his head in the dark, and sought his wide blue gaze. His face was pained.

 

“I—I dowant to believe that, Cas, but—”

 

“Can you look me in the eye,” Cas said, drawing himself up a little, catching Dean's face in his hand and catching his attention, “after everything we've seen, and everyone we've met, and tell me truly that you don't think there's even the slightest chance that this could be good? I know—I know what the reaper said. But I'm not sure anymore. I'm not sure of anything about it. If there's even the most remote possibility, if there's even the smallest notion of that—don't we owe it to ourselves to surrender to the benefit of the doubt?”

 

“I don't think I can do that.”

 

“I don't see why you can't.”

 

“Cas—”

 

“Haven't we worried enough? What else is there to worry about?”

 

“I'm worried about—me.”

 

Cas blinked sideways at him, finding the line of his jaw in the dark.

 

“What about you?”

 

“I'm afraid—I won't _be_ me at the end of this.”

 

Cas said nothing for a moment, and then he sighed. He slipped off the bed and came round, sliding onto Dean's lap without asking for permission, legs bracketing them there, and he took Dean's face in his hands.

 

“I know you,” he said, firmly, with conviction. He could see Dean's eyes this close up in the dark, met them, chased them wherever they moved to see his face. “I know you better than anyone except Sam. And I know—I believe—that the only thing you'll be at the end of this, no matter what's in that book, no matter what's in New Orleans—the only thing you'll be is yourself.”

 

He smoothed his hands down Dean's shoulders, touched his strong arms, pressed their foreheads together.

 

“It'll take more than some prayer book to make you into someone I don't love,” he whispered.

 

Dean blinked, their faces mere centimeters apart, and their eyelashes tangled for a moment before Cas felt his heartbeat slow beneath his hands, and felt his arms come up around him.

 

“How'd this happen?” Dean whispered. “You and me.”

 

“We made it up as we went along,” Cas murmured, smiling softly, smoothing Dean's hair from his face. “And now we're here. And that's all.”

 

“Yeah,” Dean said, in a breathless whisper. “Yeah.”

 

Cas kissed him, then—a gentle kiss, nothing forward, nothing hard, just a very little sweetness, a very little touch.

 

“Isn't that something,” Dean murmured.

 

“And no matter what,” Cas said, against his mouth, “no matter what happens tomorrow, with the book, with New Orleans...we always had this. And we had the road. And we had all the good things—all the good things before.”

 

They stayed like that a while, breathing the air of one another, and then at no particular moment they moved, and lay back down. And Dean's heart was calm enough to let him feel the press of night upon his face, and he held Cas tight, and Cas held him in turn.

 

Two precious lonely things clinging tightly in the black.

 

 

* * *

 

Morning broke, unextraordinary.


	11. New Orleans, LA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.”

The silence didn't follow them to New Orleans. They hit the city, or the city hit them—something hit something—and all the noise flooded at once. The traffic, the boats, the people. Construction, car engines, barge whistles, fast-talking voices, all of it pushing its way into the car and around them.

 

Dean felt caged. This was the city at the end, this was the edge of the world and it dropped off with the flat spread of the Mississippi delta. No more downriver; it all would come to rest here, where the silt settled.

 

They found her name in a phone book - a round, beautiful name. Olivia Delacroix. Even the plain standard printing couldn't erase the old dignity from it; it stood out, affected by something ancient and mysterious.

 

She lived a little outside of the actual city on a quiet patch of undisturbed ground that had not been fully developed. The usually brown Mississippi gleamed in bands of gold in the late afternoon sun, curving itself to the road they were on, surface shifting as clouds came and went.

 

A small bayou bordered her house. The place was tall but a little tilted, brown wood siding weathered to a dull greyish color. Cypress trees and willows adorned in clinging moss crowded the lawn. A long serpentine dirt drive wound its way up to the front, lined by messy clumps of reedy grass and wild brambles.

 

The huge verandah porch was occupied by a rocking chair, and a large hand painted sign in French and English was tacked to the wall beside the door: "Welcome. _Bienvenue_.”

 

Dean parked the car and the three of them stepped out, hesitating in front of the house that seemed to be the center of everything, the clearing and the grove buzzing with insects and mosquitos. A rabbit flung itself from the underbrush, scaring all of them, tearing off into the swamp.

 

"Well," Dean said.

 

He never really finished his sentence; they barely had a plan beyond 'get the book.'

 

Get the book. Read the book. God knew what else.

 

With no more room for waiting, Dean did what he'd been doing his whole life and took a step forward.

 

Sam and Cas followed.

 

There was a slant-eyed goat tethered around one side of the house, eyeing them as they went by, chewing mindlessly and twitching its tail, ears wagging to ward off the flies. There was a dull cluck of chickens coming from somewhere, and a cock crowed.

 

"Do we knock?" Cas whispered, when they'd reached the front door, and Dean raised his hand, fist poised.

 

The door on the other side of the screen flung itself open and Dean's hand hung in the air, all of them just able to make out the shadowy image of a woman through the mesh.

 

"Ho?" Her hoarse voice met their ears. "Who this on my porch?"

 

She pushed the screen open without any more warning and stepped out of her shady house, her jewelry clanking and her cane poking out, jabbing at Dean's shoe, forcing him back and nearly toppling him into Sam. She beat the end of it on the floorboards and held the door open with one dark wrinkled hand, still staring at them. Her eyes were searching and curious as they lit on all of them, and she nodded, face cracking into a smile.

 

"Three white boys!" She laughed, a witchy sound. "Yes, three white boys on my porch lookin' for a book! I know this one!"

 

She lifted her arms and pulled Sam's jacket.

 

"Come here, let me see you!" she said, and he found himself bent over as she took his face in her hands and kissed both his cheeks before releasing him as a grandmother might.

 

She moved on to Cas, shuffling in her long black dress, the fringe of her shawl swinging around her elbows. Cas stared at the bright scarf wrapped around her head, keeping her hair up while she planted her red lips on his face. All of them were stunned into silence—but then again none of them had known what to expect.

 

She faced Dean and put her hands on her hips, tapping her long fingernail on her cane.

 

He straightened, stiff in her presence, unyielding. She _tsk_ ed at him, her tongue darting out and her head shaking, hooped earrings bumping her neck.

 

"You're the trouble," she sighed, and she did not kiss him, but patted his face gently before she grabbed his chin, yanking it down to look into her dark eyes. "You behave yourself and I’ll do what I can for you. You make trouble? I make trouble.”

 

"We're just here for the book, lady," he said gruffly, and she raised her eyebrows.

 

"Lady? No. You call me Madame Olivia or Madame, you hear me? No sass in my house or on my porch. Pass you a slap, you muddy thing." She wagged his chin with her thumb and tapped his face gently, making his eye squint up.

 

"Sorry, sorry, alright—" he said, giving in, and she pulled back, turning to look at the three of them at once: Dean rubbing his face, Sam staring at her wide-eyed, and Cas confused.

 

She nodded and hummed to herself, pleased by what she saw.

 

"You all look so scared, poor babes," she said, soothing, after a moment. "I have what you need, don't make such sad eyes!" She tamped her cane again and then turned to go back into the house. "You come along in and we'll have a meal! Your Grand-mère fixed you a good supper!"

 

She disappeared into the house, and Dean shook his head, too shocked to scowl.

 

"Here goes nothing," Sam said, moving to open the door.

 

 

* * *

 

The house was crammed; velvet upholstered chairs were pressed up against the walls, divided by heavy teak furniture. Vases, valuables, oddities, dried flowers and strange shadow boxes lined the walls and the countless bookshelves stuffed full of literature and relics. The house smelled like spices and the vinegar of yellow-paged books and the light coming in through the lace curtains was pale blue and dusty.

 

There was a closed back room and a narrow staircase, and right off the entry was a parlor, the floor sloping down towards the kitchen where they could hear her banging around.

 

Dean cursed.

 

"We gotta find a way to get that damn book and get out of here," he hissed, and Cas broke his eyes away from a lampshade with tinkling crystal beads hanging from it. Sam stared at a skull on the mantle with ruby eyes and a heavy black box beside it.

 

"I think it's better to play by her rules," Cas whispered back, after a moment, taking it all in. He felt for Dean's hand and Dean took it, unashamed, more for support than anything else. "We don't want more trouble than we need."

 

Dean shook his head, shoving past to the kitchen with Cas nearly in tow. Cas let out his breath on a stutter and closed his eyes. Sam followed after.

 

* * *

 

Madame Olivia was stooped over her stove, her cane resting on the wall; the pantry door was open and yellow light sprawled onto the floor as she ladled something into a bowl and set it aside.

 

She smiled to herself when she heard him come in. The bowlegged one with the hungry eyes. She knew how desperate he was and she moved her head nervously. It would turn out. They’d made it here. Him alone making it here was a miracle in itself…she could feel him ready to make his hungry demand and she laughed, made a little _shh-shh_ sound.

 

”Don't you even ask me,” she said firmly, making sure not to spill any of the gumbo over the sides of the bowl in her hand. "If you think you've waited a long time, try a hundred years. You can wait till supper is over. There's ceremony to these things—"

 

She paused and turned over her shoulder, looking directly at him, eyes narrowed suspiciously.

 

"You hear that?" she said, and Dean blanched.

 

He had barely taken two steps into the kitchen to demand the book, Cas having slipped from his fingers in the doorway, when she'd shut him down. He started to say something and she held up a hand, heavy gold rings making her fingers curl.

 

"Shh!" she said.

 

There was a dry rustling sound and a fire came over her face. Dean's face furrowed. The woman was ancient looking - how the hell had she heard that over the sound of herself talking?

 

"Naughty thing!" she squawked, setting the bowl down and putting the ladle into the pot.

 

She picked up a broom where it leaned against the wall. Dean didn't know what to say.

 

"What's happening?" Cas asked, concerned, appearing at his side. Sam was ducking in too, and Dean just gestured at the open pantry where the woman had gone, brandishing the broom like a weapon. His mouth was an open shape of confusion.

 

There were bangs and clatters and a tin of something rolled out of the pantry, followed by muffled curses.

 

"Shoo! You naughty thing! Naughty Baby! After those duck eggs!" Madame Olivia's voice rattled through the small kitchen, and Cas suddenly pointed to the floor.

 

A yellow python slithered out of the pantry, wriggling to get away from the broom chasing it and coiling under the kitchen table defensively. Olivia reemerged, staring down at it.

 

"I tell you once, I tell you a hundred times, Baby! You stay out of that pantry or I will skin you for boots!"

 

The snake coiled tighter, as if shamed, and flicked its tongue.

 

Olivia turned to her audience and gestured to the snake under the table, sounding frustrated. "My little monster."

 

They drew a blank, not really sure what they'd witnessed. Definitely not the fire and brimstone that they'd anticipated.

 

Just a woman and fat yellow snake and the gumbo simmering on the stove.

 

"Well, we've had a good scare!" Olivia said, fists on her hips again. "Let's eat before this mashwarohn eats _me_!"

 

She laughed, nodding towards Dean, who had been clenching his fist until he forced them to relax, forced his fingers open.

 

"What did you call me?"

 

She blinked, head tilting. Her mouth quirked upwards.

 

"Mashwarohn!" she repeated, turning back to the gumbo. "Means 'catfish', crazy boy!"

 

 

* * *

 

She didn't tell them to eat, unlike anyone else they'd met, but they ate anyway under her watchful stare. She criticized her own cooking, but in the way that encouraged them to compliment, and they did.

 

She sat at the head of the table, watching them all, hands folded under chin, fixing her pensive gaze on their faces, and without any kind of fanfare or introduction she began to speak.

 

"My name is Olivia Delacroix," she said, and Cas' spoon waited before entering his mouth. He put it back down among the rice and met her eyes. "I was born in 1894 in this very house. This is the house my father built and died in. I buried him myself in the backyard when he died of the Spanish flu. It took my brother Angelique, my mother, and my youngest sister Mercedes. And I buried all of them. I've lived a strange life, so strange things have come to me."

 

"1894—" Sam coughed. "That makes you?"

 

"Over a hundred years old," Cas said, and Olivia smiled.

 

"And I can still make the best beignets in Louisiana." Her eyes crinkled in delight.

 

"You don't look a day over _seventy_ ," Sam said, wide-eyed, and she waved an arthritic hand at him.

 

"And you three—are not just any three white boys. You're the Winchester brothers." She flicked her eyes between them. "And that holy star, Castiel."

 

They stared at her. It was perturbing, being known by so many strangers.

 

She grinned at them, their looks of confusion. "I know what I know, that's all. I'm old and I have old friends." She shrugged.

 

"What kind of old friends?" Castiel asked.

 

She winked at him. "Very old ones."

 

"How did you get it?" Sam interrupted. "The book."

 

She drummed her fingers on the table.

 

"Not important," she answered. “You came for it. That is what is important."

 

The yellow snake had begun to creep into her lap out of places unknown, and she stroked its head, letting it wind around her shoulders as she took another bite of her food and let the spoon rest on the table, finished.

 

"Now," she said; and they had long stopped eating, and were staring at her, anxious. Afraid.

 

She lifted her eyes. The evening light made her look strange, all outlined in fuzzy purple.

 

"This is a particular book. A very particular book that says very particular things. Old things that I won't speak. They can only be read, and I will only let you read them if I think it is the right thing to do."

 

She stared intently at Dean, and at Cas.

 

"You cannot go back. You cannot undo once you have done. If I give you the book, if I let you read—if I let you read what has been waiting for you here—you are responsible for what comes of it. Good or bad or otherwise."

 

Dean swallowed.

 

Cas was holding his hand so tightly under the table that he thought he might burst with it.

 

"You remember what I am saying," she whispered. "Whatever you learn, it is knowledge that belongs to you and you alone. And that is the way it has always been."

 

 

* * *

 

They followed her down the winding back hall, all three of them. Dean at her heels, and Castiel holding his hand; as they neared the back window, looking out over the bayou, Cas reached back, swallowing, and found the edge of Sam's sleeve, and held that, too.

 

Madame Olivia told them to take a seat in the room there, a dark close room with dusty drapes and sallow lamplight, and then she wandered off elsewhere again. For a few brief moments they were left alone.

 

None of them followed her instructions to sit. They hovered together in the center of the room, both brothers held by Castiel's tight and anxious grip, and they could almost feel themselves growing smaller—ever smaller, ever tinier, ever shrinking in the face of whatever they'd arrived here to witness.

 

In breathless quiet they heard her come back down the hall, and she came back into the room without ceremony, without reverence.

 

And in her hands she held a book, held straight out in offering to them.

 

Gingerly, unable to breathe correctly, Dean reached out and took it from her.

 

It was ancient. Thinner than he'd imagined, too. Covers like cardboard; he couldn't tell what kind of material was covering them. Leather, maybe. Old and cracking and spiderwebbing leather. Gently, terrified to move it too much should it fall to pieces in his hands, he turned it over—swept one hesitant fingertip over its front, over the letters embossed, grainy, into its surface.

 

_The Riverlands Hymnal._

 

Madame Olivia sat down in one of the armchairs in the corner. She folded her legs, and rested her cane on the armrest, and laced her fingers together in her lap, and watched.

 

Dean swallowed hard.

 

He was holding it. Here in his hands. The thing—the thing itself, and he'd almost been convinced it didn't exist at all; it had seemed so nebulous, so grand. It was here. The story they had followed all the way down the river—or, perhaps, he thought, the story that had followed them; under the cracked and weathered covers he imagined dancing lines of text, speaking of miracles. Speaking of grand harvests, and the aurora borealis, of children cheating death, of kingfishers flocking. Speaking of all the evil things in the darkness pulling away, shrinking back as if from flame. The story that made wolves losing the moon, made gods brew tea. An eternal spring. A great celebration. Speaking of something so enormous that Death himself had walked to bring it home.

 

Speaking of—

 

“I need some space,” Dean said, his voice so quiet and cracked that his companions hardly heard at first; but then Sam moved away, moved to stand beside the bokor woman's chair.

 

And Cas kept his grip on Dean's arm for as long as he could. He met his eyes, and held them, and then, reluctant, let go, and moved to stand with Sam.

 

Dean turned his head, fingers pulling at his mouth, the book heavy in his other hand. Another chair by the window, caressed in aching tendrils of lowering sunlight, and he sank down into it.

 

His heart was beating a frantic tattoo in his chest, and he wasn't entirely certain why. It was only a book. It wouldn't come alive. By opening it he could do no more harm or good than had already been done and his fingers were itching with it, trembling over the spine, ghosting over the edges of the pages.

 

The spine creaked, and the first yellowed page fell open under his hands.

 

_The Columbine Gospel._

 

Dimly he was aware of one gentle movement in the corner—Sam, placing his hand on Castiel's shoulder; Castiel, reaching up to touch it where it lay.

 

They stared at him. Brother, lover, woman.

 

Dean took a trembling breath and focused on the page. Pushed them out. Pulled himself into an island of the sunset through the shades, and the chair, and the impossible weight of the book in his hands.

 

“ _As it was written_ ,” he read—aloud, but so softly that even he could hardly hear— “ _so it is written, so it has been and shall be and is, in this last great age of choice.”_

 

Something—his heart, his lungs, his soul itself—seemed to twitch within him, like a flicker of the tongue.

 

“ _So it has forever been...that the Heavens wed the Earth...that fire...wed blood...that song wed flesh; and all sands, all bells—all rivers call out...the sound of their divine...and unbreakable Love.”_

 

He blinked. The twitch was stronger, had come again, like arrhythmia in his pulse, but beating gently against his sternum, and he realized that his eyes were hot and stinging.

 

“ _My love...is the land between two rivers._ ”

 

His voice fell away.

 

Everything fell away, then. The world collapsed a little bit, it seemed—bent down to envelop him. Leaving him nothing but his breath, and the thing that was stirring in his chest, thrashing now, as if waking from sleep. Nothing but his breath, and the feeling, and the page. And he read.

 

The words rose up to meet him, gently black against the yellowed paper, years and years and years old, and the words older still—there was age in every serif, every paragraph, ancient and incredible age, and it spoke.

 

It told him, in the whispers of the crackling glue and the smell of the aged thing, that once, before there had been anything else, there had been a story.

 

A God who saw love lacking in the world He had made. Who formed two stones from the dust beneath His feet and breathed into them, and blessed them. A Death who looked on love with sadness. A split. A pouring out.

 

A star who fell in love with a catfish.

 

Pages. Pages.

 

A catfish who had forgotten himself. A brother who wandered the world in search of him.

 

It came up like the rushing of current or tide, the catfish, the hands of the thing a man had become, a gift to a light shining brighter than any in the sky. The bending of the star to pluck the catfish from the mud. Pages. Pages.

 

And in it—in it all—he heard himself. He heard the murmurs of the story twisting round and pressing, the truth of it, the fact of it.

 

_A man gave himself away for love of his brother._

 

_A man who sank into the darkest of the dark places until—an angel—_

 

Pages.

 

— _reminded him that he was human, and brought him home._

 

Pages of his history.

 

Star. Catfish. Angel and man. Sweeping out before him in unfathomable arcs.

 

It was their story.

 

From very far away he heard the bokor woman's voice say, “Well now.”

 

He read. He read leaf after leaf, and the great thing thrashed and writhed in his chest, crowding in his throat, trembling with the hammering of his heart. For they were here— _they were here—_ they were stars and fish, they were brothers and dust, they were kings, and kingfishers, nets and rivers, they were men.

 

_They were men._

 

His hands stuttered over the edges, desperate to eat up more of the story, starving for it, flying through it as if it were the only thing there was to know, the only thing that mattered, the only thing that had ever mattered, and he wasn't even aware of the hot blur of tears clouding his vision and cascading down his face in shameless streams until he heard an intake of breath across the room that he would recognize to his dying day, the sound of Castiel and his human lungs, and on the end of that tender-taken breath he looked up and met his eyes and _saw._

 

Dean's breath stammered in his throat and he dissolved, broke apart at the sight of him, his beautiful bird-boned breathless fallen angel, the snuffed-out glory dwelling in the flesh of a man, the pale knuckles of his hand standing out like mountains against the touch of Sam beside him.

 

And in all of him, in every inch and marrowed bone of him, Dean saw the hugeness—saw the blinding brightness, the ancient and impossible thing of him behind his eyes, filling up the room like some long-forgotten sun. A star.

 

It was him.

 

It was all of them.

 

Dean pressed a shaking hand to his mouth but it couldn't keep back the sob that he let out that formed itself into the words, “ _It's us.”_

 

The world crashed in again.

 

Cas broke out from under Sam's hand, and together they rushed forward, flung themselves to him, and Cas wrapped his arms around Dean's shoulders and held him and the jolt of their touch made the thing in Dean's ribcage stand up and tremble, and he dropped the book into his lap and reached up, his entire body shivering, clutched Castiel down, buried himself in the edges of him.

 

And Sam's hands upon them, flighty, unsure how best to hold them, _had_ to hold them, because there was something in the room, there was something surging out of their bodies and it had to be let out, and they had to keep their ground.

 

The book lay open in Dean's lap, across his knees. And Madame Olivia sat in her chair and watched them fall apart, clutching one another like drowning men, and she stroked her lower lip and hummed softly to herself.

 

“Just so,” she said. They were shuddering, all of them, and Dean weeping like a child, and holding Castiel as if to burst him, because he knew, now. He knew the truth in it. He understood, at last, and the sunset glimmered on the bayou in that back room, and it had all been let loose, let free, let out to show its face again.

 

Finally.

 

Finally.

 

* * *

 

Madame Olivia spoke, though her guests were in no state to understand; she spoke to the dimming of the day, to the sound of the river way out and beyond, to the strangeness hovering there with them all.

 

“It has always been you,” she said, softly, and without haste. “For you know the universe is a love story, you see. The love of God for that which was not Himself.

 

It has always been you. The three souls born in that first thunderclap when He made you so. Two stones, and the dust of them. Before there was time to measure such great things you were, in one way or another.

 

You were star, then, and catfish, catfish who had been a man, but had forgotten how to walk on dry land. And the brother left behind who threw down his scythe and dreamed.

 

And you were the sons of kings, and the sons of low people; you were a kingfisher, and a net; you were a river. And you chased each other, all of you, through so many shapes, so many skins, looking for the right ones, and your souls, oh, your souls were heavy, your souls were sad.

 

You were a high-born woman and the gift her father gave her. You were two soldiers who kissed out of fear in their foxholes and you were the bullet that killed them both. You were the man who married wrong and the woman he drowned and the flowers scattered on their bed. You were swallowing stones because you knew their shape to be your own. You were lost—and each time the story ended wrong, but the story lived, and the people who understood—they listened to the wisdom of it. They believed. And all great things thrive on dreams.

 

But you found the bonds again. You remembered bone, and muscle—you remembered brotherhood, and glory, and you formed yourselves, and you were _men._ And that is how the story ends, how it was always meant to end, my dear children, in the taking of flesh by _choice_. And you found each other. That free will you fought so hard for, gave so much for, that is _here_ now, and you gave yourselves that gift.

 

You are the lucky bodies. The culmination. And this was always meant to come to pass. And I have waited all my years, and cheated Death for most of them, to see it, and the whole wide world has known that it was coming, and it has made the way straight for you. That pale boy in the cold places knew it first, and all the others since, and they have been guiding you, making their own choices in turn, and they have left you with the final choice.

 

It has always been you. And it has always been your choice.

 

And there is no obligation, my darlings. No one will blame you if it ends here in this room, halfway. Not a one of us.

 

The Word of God is in the river,” the bokor woman finished, softly, her eyes heavy-lidded, her guests heavy-bodied, together. “The Word of God is in this house tonight.”

 

* * *

 

Sam jerked when a hand found its way to his back. Olivia, her shawl pulled over her shoulders, shrouding her body, her head slightly bowed.

 

“Come with me, sweet,” she whispered, so as not to disturb. She looked at the forms buried under his arms. “You’ve done your part and done it well.”

 

She moved her fingers on his shirt in encouragement, and he let his brother and Castiel go, unfolding himself from the knot they’d made, stepping back with her.

 

“You’ve done a fine, fine job,” Olivia continued, taking his hand, leading him out of the room like a small child. “Now they’ve got some things to ask of each other; a few choices to make.”

 

Sam glanced back at them. They hadn’t moved.

 

Locked together, a tangle of arms and legs and fingers

 

“Don’t you worry. They’re made of strong stuff.” She patted his hand as she said this, and he knew dimly that she was talking about him—that they were made of him. “Stones got to be made of the strong things, or it all falls apart.”

 

* * *

 

Perhaps hours.

 

Perhaps seconds.

 

The weight of centuries, a thousand lives, a thousand nights, a thousand voices, and Dean felt them all. The pain, the longing, the crippling loneliness, the endless search for something to soothe the inconsolable ache, the burn of anger and the bruise of sadness, and all this he claimed. He felt ancient, as if the back of his skull had opened and six dozen lives he'd lived but not remembered until now had tumbled out, unfolding like a pop-up book, back and back.

 

“It was always you,” Dean whispered against Cas’ skull. “It was always you. Every time…”

 

Castiel was speechless, Dean’s words entering him and staying, bouncing around his head. He barely registered that Sam and Olivia had left, leaving him and Dean alone, the little book pressed benign between them.

 

“All this time, and I didn’t know. Or maybe I did – maybe I did and I just didn’t realize,” Dean said, voice slipping into a ramble, an excess of thoughts jumbling out of his mouth.

 

“You didn’t know what, Dean?” Cas asked, and Dean pulled away, wiped his eyes of tears that were quickly replaced by new ones.

 

“This.” he picked up the book and held it, pushed it towards Cas’ chest. “This, Cas. Everything.”

 

Castiel stared at it.

 

He had once thought he'd known and understood everything, that his angelhood, his holiness, had granted him the gift of all knowledge. There was nothing he did not know, there was nothing he did not understand, there was no mystery.

 

Now, there was a small book cradled in Dean’s hands, and it was not the book that he touched first, but Dean’s fingers, drawing a gasp from Dean’s slack mouth. The hunter shuddered; he trembled at the brush of Cas’ hand.

 

“Please,” Dean whispered, voice quavering. “Cas, please – please.”

 

He pushed the book towards him and Cas swallowed, taking it, letting the weight of it fall in his palms.

 

He cracked it open.

 

He too, cracked open, broken apart no sooner than the first few words.

 

_My love._

 

It pierced him, a spear of something intense and bright.

 

 _My love_ , it called, it sang, it screamed, it shouted, it wept. _My love_ , and wasn’t it? The resurgent memory, buried deep in his soul, the sleeping light born madly from the deep black void, the velvet silence at the beginning of all beginnings, in the time before all times. _My love_ ; his love, spanning the eons and the ages, the rivers, the world, his love so deep and wide and waiting, revived at last, reborn, reconstituted.

 

All he had known unwinding, pulled apart by two words. He'd thought he'd known. He'd thought he'd understood. He'd known nothing, he'd understood nothing until now.

 

 _My love_. His love, forsaken and abandoned, left to wait on so many shores, unsatisfied, unresolved, waiting, watching, praying for the day the darkness would ease and the light would take its place. How he had waited—he had been patient and steady, he had been steadfast and strong, he had _waited_ so long for the one in the water, for the one asleep, for the hollow thing that would catch and carry him.

 

He had loved him, this king, this man, this house, across realms and spans of existence. His slave, his master, his lover—there was no form he had not known him in, there was no face he had not seen him as, and all through this he had loved him, had wanted him, had been slain by his love and resurrected again in the hopes that this time he would finally pull him out of the mud and be asked that cherished question.

 

He read.

 

The book fell from his hands, snagged on his leg. He shook violently and those wonderful hands reached out and touched his face, and he _longed,_ as he had never longed before, for those hands on his body, to reach in and claim him, to catch him, to hold him. To never part from them, to never know a day without them, the wonderful, perfect hands of this man.

 

“I will beg for you,” Dean rasped, tilting Cas’ head up, and it was his voice, but it wasn't his voice; they were his words, but not his words, words older than his tongue, words older than both of them, like a prayer, like a poem or a plea, snaring on the hills and falls of Dean's voice, like ink blossoming in water. Things that had been waiting millenia to be said. It hurt to have something so ancient in his throat. “I'll—fall on my knees for you and I'll lie—at your feet, I will give you my soul. I'll give you my hands and my body. I will throw myself before you, I will build you a house,” he whispered, and Cas’ breath came in short, quick motions, his fingers digging into Dean’s arms. “I’ll do anything – I’ll do anything for you.”

 

“You don’t,” Cas stuttered, jilted, the words clumsy, “you don’t have to do anything—”

 

He struggled with the rest.

 

“Ask, and I'll do whatever—whatever you ask,” he whispered, his voice cracking like pottery, his eyes almost unfathomably heavy with tears. “Ask me, Dean—Dean—”

 

His voice surged out of him like water and he broke.

 

The world slowed its turning for that one moment, paused its eternal revolution around the sun, to recalibrate the axis of everything until it fit around the two of them. The universe collared by their words, barely spoken, but felt, but seen.

 

“I want this,” Dean said. “I want this. I want what it says, I want you, I want you—I want you…” His words dissolved into a chant like prayer.

 

“Ask me.” The whispered reply hovering against his mouth, but not touching it, waiting. “Ask me, and I will give it to you.”

 

Dean slid from the chair. His knees bit into the edge of the rug where it met the floor and he bowed his head, took the slender hands in his own. He bent over Cas’ lap. He kissed the skin of his hands, adoring it, mouthed a spot on one of his knuckles.

 

“ _I shall be the ring on your hand_ ,” Dean whispered, unsure of where the words came from, but feeling them pull like fishhooks from his tongue, trailing kisses up the inside of Cas’ wrist. “ _I shall be the path that you walk._ ” The words he knew without knowing them. “ _I shall be the house where you stay_.” It all sounded too old, too important, to rest on his lips, but he said it anyway, spilled it all like a sinner making his confession.

 

Cas’ breath stopped. His eyes closed.

 

“Walk with me?” Dean said, and Castiel had never felt—there was no word that would do it justice. “Come _home_ with me. Let it be me. Only me. First, last, every time. Don’t sleep anywhere else. Don’t be anywhere else. Don’t be with anyone else.”

 

Dean’s voice choked.

 

“Belong with me. Let me have you, and I swear to God, Cas, I’ll give you everything I have. I’ll give you the whole fucking planet if you want it. You caught me, Cas, you pulled me up and you found me and you made me—you made me _this man_ , so stay with me.”

 

Wet slipped from Cas' trembling lashes. A breath, a reedy noise, some sound of relief at the words he had wanted to hear, had been dying over and over to hear, escaped Cas. He had asked. He would receive. He would receive all of it.

 

Their eyes met, and Castiel leaned down.

 

“The first time, the last time, a thousand times. I am yours.”

 

Mouths slanting to fit, gasping, open, sharing, giving, asking, answering, words and whispers, promises passing between them – _you shall have me, this body, this soul_.

 

“Soon,” Cas breathed, into Dean’s mouth, as Dean’s hands mapped his body over his clothes. He whimpered with want, he pulled Cas closer to him, kissed him, threaded his fingers through the silk of his hair, hungry.

 

“Soon,” Cas vowed, to satisfy his silent pleas, their joy so close to spilling over, and Dean miraculously was soothed, and they curled into each other, holding fast, safe in the knowledge of what was to come.

 

The world shuddered with anticipation.

 

It would not be long.

 

The time of weddings had fallen at last.


	12. In the House of Olivia Delacroix, LA (Part One)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days. Three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”

Madame Olivia made coffee in her kitchen, coffee with chicory. Beignets on a plate, warm and soft and drowning in powdered sugar, her own recipe. In the next room her three guests were waiting, sitting in the half-dark.

 

They were all very tired, and dusk had only just fallen. Tired from the road, she knew, but also exhausted by what they'd seen and heard and read in her house tonight, and she knew they were waiting for an explanation, a real one. Something solid to hold on to, a pin to put in their map, to wind their string around, to find the compass direction in which to fumble next.

 

The yellow python twisted across the kitchen floor and lay heavy over her feet, and gently she moved her old stooped legs to shoo it off.

 

“No love now, Baby,” she murmured. “I've got teaching to do.”

 

On a painted wooden tray she carried in the coffee and the food, careful of her hips and the doorway, and she set it down on the table in the middle of her parlor and clapped the white sugar off her dark hands.

 

“Well, now,” she said, moving carefully to her own seat. “I do suppose you'd like to know what's going on, in plain words.”

 

She looked at them, all three. Castiel and Dean were sitting so close to one another so as to almost vanish into each other's bodies, on the sagging love-seat beneath the window; Sam sat only a little ways apart from them, bent forward over his knees, fingers tangled, looking mightily bewildered.

 

She cleared her throat, gestured to the coffee and beignets. “Take, eat,” she said, snapping her long-nailed fingers. “You boys got to learn to take food from Riverlanders when they give it to you! It's terribly ungrateful not to. Especially when you boys have had such an almighty shock.”

 

Hesitantly, they obeyed, their eyes drifting from her to one another all the while.

 

“The thing of it is,” she said, “that it's all simple. I'm saying this for poor Brother here, big old eyes like dinner plates.” She smiled at Sam, who shifted uneasily. “I think you two understand a little better what it all means.”

 

Dean and Cas glanced at one another, and Sam saw the look from the corner of his eye—though it only lasted an instant it seemed as if they would be content to never move from that attaching gaze for the rest of their lives.

 

“Yeah,” Dean said, hoarsely. “I think we've got the picture.”

 

Olivia nodded.

 

“The fact of the matter is that you children have the lot of being favorites,” the old woman said, folding her hands in her lap. “You been through one of God's stories already, so everyone with ears to the veil knows—you played it out your own way, the right way, the way of choices and decisions. Takes a lot of courage to let your actors improvise, but that God of yours is a courageous one.” She moved her feet a little as the yellow python slithered under her chair, and moved them back to let the snake lie over them again. “The universe is made of love stories, and those roles you played, the great things in motion that you set to rest, was just another one of them. You—” She pointed to Sam, not in accusation but in appreciation—“loved your kin so much that you saved us all, and we all are mighty grateful.”

 

Sam swallowed, flushed, looked down. He felt Dean and Castiel's eyes on him, a little wider than normal with the truth of it.

 

“This is another love story,” she said. “The starring roles the same, the actors on the same stage, but a little different. A little kinder. Full of much more choice from the beginning than the other ever was.”

 

Olivia shifted in her chair, sat up straighter.

 

“Listen, child,” she said, to Sam, and he lifted his head in attention. “I am telling you that it's very simple. Your souls are very old—older than angels, even, though one of you was angel for a terribly long time.

 

Your brother is a catfish, boy. And your dear friend is a star. And you are the dust that made them up before they took even those shapes, the shapes that stuck, the shapes we remember, the thing that's held them together all this time, in these bodies, now. And all of you have pushed and pulled your way up through such a very long time, and now you are here, and the story's come to a good end. The closing of a chapter.”

 

She cleared her throat. Looked at them.

 

She was an old woman, Olivia Delacroix. Since the day she had decided, simply, to never die, and all the years she had lasted since then, she had thought that she would live to see them here, reunited in full and at last—God's favorite characters, the ones He'd written so many stories about. But though she had known that someday they would be here in her parlor, learning of themselves, it still struck her with a frightening intensity, the profundity of it—of all of them, three tired and weary white boys sitting on her couch, and their souls gleaming brighter and louder to her old eyes than any sunrise she had ever seen.

 

“Mashwarohn,” she said, turning her face to Dean, and he straightened. “How much of that book did you read?”

 

“Almost all,” he said. “Enough.”

 

Olivia hummed.

 

“All them gospels.”

 

“Yes ma'am.”

 

“And the book that comes after?”

 

Cas and Sam looked at him; he stared straight at Madame Olivia, throat working, as if he were keeping something back.

 

“Yes ma'am,” he said again, after only a moment. “I did.”

 

“Star boy,” Olivia said, flickering to Cas. “You read it too?”

 

“Not as much,” Cas said softly. “Only a little.”

 

“Then, mashwarohn.” Olivia tapped the end of her cane on the wooden floor, like a gavel. “I'm thinking, if I have been reading your face right this evening, that you've got something you want to say.”

 

Dean's eyes went a little wide, his face a little pale. He could feel Sam watching him, Cas watching him, the bokor woman's gaze pinning him down.

 

“Yes ma'am,” he said, for the third time, his voice scarcely a whisper. “I do.”

 

“Dean,” Cas said, softly, and his pale hand came to rest on Dean's knee.

 

“What did it say?” Sam asked. Unobtrusive; merely curious, curious as to what could make his brother go white like that, curious as to what was hiding on Dean's tongue.

 

“At the end of the story,” Dean said, near-stammering but holding his ground, “it says—the star and the catfish become human. They get—married.”

 

Imperceptibly, Olivia nodded. She closed her eyes.

 

“And I—if...”

 

He paused for a long time, biting the inside of his lip, acutely aware of Castiel's hand on him, the nearness of him.

 

“...if you wanted to, Cas,” he said, finally, turning a little to face him, “if—if you love me as much as you say you do...if you can believe—that I love you as much as I do—I know it's a lot, I know it's huge, I know—if you—”

 

“Dean,” Cas whispered, not even a whisper. Only a sound.

 

“If you married me,” Dean said, “I can't think of anything in the world that would feel more right.”

 

In the silence that followed, the clock on Olivia's mantle chocked, loudly, dividing the world into instants, and it seemed that the universe held its breath.

 

There were tears hovering on Castiel's eyelids, crystalline against the blue of his gaze, and they trembled and fell when he opened his mouth to pull in a breath.

 

“Yes,” he said, on the letting-out of it, and his face crumpled into indescribable happiness. “I will. I will, I will.”

 

Sam, sitting beside them on the couch, watched as they fell into each other, opening and kissing more deeply and lovingly than he'd ever seen them, and tears streaming down Castiel's face, and a smile on his lips; he felt his heart leap, and pressed shaking joyous fingers to his mouth.

 

 

* * *

 

Lily Francis' phone rang on the counter of her father's shop just as she was drawing the shades for the night, the only lights the fluorescent bulbs above the front door.

 

For a moment she stalled, hands on her hips, eyes rolled up. Chances were it was Travis fucking Gissler again, drunk again, calling again, moaning and griping about her sixth-count-'em-sixth turning-down of a marriage proposal from his stupid fumbling lips. She sighed heavily; she was coming to the end of her rope with that one.

 

She'd considered changing her number a few weeks back before she'd remembered the tall funny boy who _had_ her number. And so she hadn't.

 

Groaning, Lily stalked back across the loud wooden boards and snatched up the phone, and fell stock-still.

 

Speak of the Devil.

 

Hastily, she untied her apron at the small of her back and tossed it unceremoniously over the counter, flipping open her phone just before it went to voicemail and pressing it to her ear.

 

“Sam?” she said, too quickly.

 

There was a pause before his voice came in, surprised.

 

“Hey—yeah. Hey, Lily.”

 

She smiled, her white teeth digging into her lower lip. It was damn good to hear his voice again.

 

“Didn't expect to hear from you.”

 

“Yeah—well, I...I had some time. Thought I'd call.”

 

Lily pressed the phone into her shoulder for a moment, shimmying up and onto the counter in the dimness.

 

“What's up, then?” she asked. “Still in, uh. Nowhere, Kentucky?”

 

“New Orleans, actually.”

 

“Big city.”

 

“Yeah.” He laughed a little, but it was short and fell quiet soon.

 

After a moment she said, “...you okay?”

 

“I'm—yeah, yeah, I'm fine. More than fine.”

 

“You sound like you've got something you want to spill.”

 

“Dean and Cas are getting married,” he blurted, too matter-of-factly, too quickly, and she could almost hear his jaw spring shut as soon as he'd said it.

 

Long silence.

 

“Your brother and the other one?” she said.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“That's—wow.”

 

“Yeah.” He laughed again, and it was clearer now, brighter. More his laugh. The sound she could picture on his mouth. “Dean, ah. Proposed tonight.”

 

She could feel his happiness all the way from Louisiana, she thought, sitting on the counter with his voice in her ear. She closed her eyes and pictured his wide-toothed smile, his eyes shut, maybe, leaning on something, the outside of a house. Taking time from his evening to tell her the good news.

 

He'd said so little, but she had a feeling the world would be hard-pressed to find news to make him happier than he was now.

 

“That's fantastic,” she said softly, smiling herself, trying to match him from miles away. “That's really great, Sam.”

 

“I'm—yeah.” She heard a sniff. Wondered if he was tearing up. Probably. Big old softie. “It was—kinda sudden, you know, but. It's good. I'm—it's good.”

 

Lily kicked her feet a little, connecting hollow with the counter.

 

“When's the wedding?” she asked.

 

“A few weeks,” Sam said. “There's—there's a date coming up they want to hit, you know. Sort of an anniversary. Thing.”

 

“Sounds romantic.”

 

Sam laughed, and she laughed too, soft in the back of her throat.

 

“I guess you could call it that,” he said.

 

They existed in silence for a while. Connected by voice and satellite. Despite the distance she could almost imagine him beside her, awkward and too big, all grins and long hair and strong hands. She wished, suddenly and desperately, that he _was_ beside her.

 

“I'm glad you told me,” she said, soft. “That's—that's really fantastic news.”

 

“It's not the only reason I called.”

 

She closed her eyes. Smiled.

 

“I thought so.”

 

“I've been thinking—Lily—” He paused, and she could hear him pulling at his mouth, trying to gather his words. “I don't—really know what's going to happen next. With everybody. We're—staying here for the, ah. The wedding. And. It's all kind of—turned around right now, but—”

 

“Spit it out, big man,” she said, smiling.

 

He laughed. Sighed.

 

“As soon as we know—what's what. I think I'd—like to come back up to Greenacre. And see you.”

 

“Take me away?” she whispered.

 

“If you want,” he whispered back, and suddenly they were children, telling secrets, murmuring dreams. She imagined fairy lights and blanket forts for some absurd and unreachable reason. Formed by the cadence of his voice so far away.

 

“Where would we go?” she said.

 

“I don't know.”

 

“That's good.”

 

She bit her lip, lifted her thumb to worry at it. Imagined him driving up in that slick black car. Pulling her hair down. Picking her up off the ground in his big arms, like she'd dreamt about.

 

They didn't say anything else for a very long time, and she heard him breathing, heard distant cicadas, knew that she was listening to the same night at the other end of the river, that the moon she could glimpse through the slats of the blinds was the same one that hung over him. Perhaps a little yellower with swamp air, or dazed by the noise of the crickets.

 

“Tell the happy couple congratulations, okay?” she said, after what felt like hours.

 

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah. I will.”

 

“It was really good to hear from you, Sam.”

 

“Yeah. Thank you—thank you for picking up.”

 

“For you,” she said, “anytime.”

 

Another pause.

 

“Sam?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“What made you change your mind?”

 

“About—”

 

“Well, last time you said...you said you weren't the man for me. That I should pick up, leave town, be happy. And now you say—you're coming back for me, someday, whenever. What changed?”

 

Sam didn't say anything for absolute ages, and for a moment she thought maybe the network had dropped the call, and then she heard him shift, heard him breathe.

 

“My brother's in love,” he said, simply. “And he's happier than I've ever seen him. And I figure—I figure if being in love can make someone that happy...then it can't really be a bad thing, can it?”

 

She hummed a little. Bowed her head.

 

“So I thought I'd give it a shot. You know.” He pulled in trembling air. “I figure we owe ourselves that much. You and me.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“So.”

 

“Yeah.” She smiled, biting at her lip again, shoulders dipping. She felt almost proud. “I get you.”

 

“So you'll—you'll wait? You'll see me when I get up there someday?”

 

“Honey,” she said, holding her phone like a precious thing, “you're the only person in the world I'd sit still for.”

 

* * *

 

It was the beginning of September, the first lazy turn into the dying of things, but still hot as ever by the river in New Orleans.

 

Olivia Delacroix's house seemed, irrationally, almost a little bigger on the inside than on the outside—there was room aplenty for her three guests in the rooms she and her siblings had inhabited as children. There was one room, at the top of the house, with a wide window view of the Mississippi proper, that she kept locked and barred; when asked why, she said, “Isn't time for that room yet.”

 

September eighteenth was the day that Dean and Castiel had chosen.

 

There were weeks left before that day fell, and in the meantime there was a wedding to be arranged.

 

“Simple,” Dean had said, when confronted with the idea of planning. “Nothing huge. Nothing fancy. Just—whatever the book says, and any people who matter.”

 

The end of summer was long and languorous in Madame Olivia's house. When the three hunters weren't reading her books or helping her cook meals, or talking in low voices about the wedding with smiles on their faces, or sleeping in the mosquito buzz of late afternoon, they were out, drinking in the city. For a week straight they explored the French Quarter, ducked into tourist-trap voodoo shops to smirk at the cheap faux charms and things for sale, took in Bourbon Street, the French Market, the Cafe du Monde, where the beignets were good, but not as good as Madame Olivia's. It was good to have days like this, days without hunts beckoning from states away.

 

They could afford to take this time together. They were seeing a story through to its end. It was an enormous task, and the world was giving them time for it. Though Sam kept in touch with Bobby, keeping an ear to the darker side of things, he always came up empty.

 

Everything, and Bobby meant _everything,_ had gone quiet. Not a whisper of word of a case from any corner of the country in days, as if the supernatural had shut down in anticipation of something.

 

Sam had a fair idea what that something might be.

 

Algiers Point took up a day's exploration as well, and in the evening after dinner in a crowded bar the three of them went up to the levee and stood there watching the ferry move back and forth across the river.

 

At some point in the sunset Sam excused himself, went down by the water's edge with his cell phone in hand. He left Dean and Cas at the highest point of the levee, their arms around each other's waists, gazes fixed on the lights of the French Quarter only a water's breadth away.

 

“It doesn't feel real,” Cas said, leaning into him, breaking the breeze's quiet press.

 

Dean followed the line of his eyes, watching the ferry cut across the blackening water. Didn't say anything. They were getting better, these days, at not having to say so much. It felt like all the words they needed had already been written down.

 

“It doesn't feel real, but—at the same time it feels...correct,” Cas continued. His attention flickered down a moment to Sam, sitting on a rock by the water, laughing in conversation on the phone. He turned his head to Dean, and Dean turned too, reached up with his slung-around arm to smooth Castiel's hair from his face. “It feels like a good thing to be doing.”

 

Dean looked at him a while, the sight of him, all the angles and wrinkles of his face, dark hair pushed back in the breeze.

 

“You know,” he said, softly, “it's—it's still a choice, Cas. She made it pretty clear that if we didn't want to—we didn't have to.”

 

“Dean,” Cas said, averting his eyes, almost in warning.

 

“I'm just saying—I'm not gonna push you into anything. It's a big step, Cas, it's a big thing to say _yes_ to. Marrying someone.”

 

“You couldn't make me do anything I didn't want to do,” Cas said, turning his face back out to the river, the wide river. “There is no one else I'd rather spend my life with.”

 

His hand drifted up to rest between Dean's shoulder-blades, steady.

 

“I think I knew it'd be you from—well. Nearly the beginning,” he said. “I always thought—and I was never sure, I never let it take hold, but I always thought that there was...a kind of recognition. When I met you in Hell.”

 

They tilted into each other, feet uneven on the rocks.

 

“I didn't know what it meant until now,” he continued, ever-softer. “And now we know what it was trying to say. Whatever—whatever we were building between us, you and I.”

 

“You're really sure,” Dean said, looking down at him. “You're really sure you want to spend the rest of your life with a fucked-up broken-down old guy like me?”

 

Cas scoffed. His hand was solid and beautiful against Dean's back.

 

“I've never been more sure of anything,” he said, voice as light as the glow of New Orleans ahead of them.

 

The sound of Sam's laughter drifted up to them from the river's edge.

 

“And you?” Cas said, after a while. The air was cooling with the descent of night. “You're certain you want to marry something like me? All—in-between and not-quite-anything.”

 

“Can't imagine anything I'm more sure of,” Dean replied, without hesitation.

 

Cas smiled, smiled at the city and the water and the loud braw of the ferry.

 

“Then let's get married in a week or two,” he said, lightly, tilting his head back up to Dean, and Dean couldn't resist smiling back. “Let's get married, because we're sure of it, and because we're happy. And no other deprecations. And no more reasons. Not because of any—book, or myth, or story. Just because.”

 

 

* * *

 

They learned to train their anticipation, to dull it down to something manageable. It became a quiet murmur of thought in the backs of their heads, the thread that tugged them through the idle hours and minutes and seconds.

 

So it was quite unexpected, as a new sunrise broke, when Dean walked into the crowded hallway in front of the borrowed bedroom he and Cas were sharing to see Olivia hobbling to the room at the top of the house, carrying a basket covered by a thick linen cloth in her bony arms. Baby slithered along the baseboard, ducking and twisting around furniture, guarding her mistress as usual.

 

“What are you doing?” Dean drawled, still half-asleep, as she passed, her long skirt sweeping the floor.

 

She stopped and turned to him, cocked her painted eyebrow. He eyed the basket and raised his own in challenge.

 

“What’s all that, Liv?”

 

“ _Liv_ ,” she scoffed, for the thirtieth time since he’d decided on calling her that, as if she couldn’t believe the gall he had to name her something so diminutive. He knew she liked it and the excuse it gave her to scold him affectionately even more. “Like I’ll tell you, you cheeky thing,” she continued. “It’s all my worst mayhem, don’t worry. Only the ugliest sheets in town for the weddin’ bed.”

 

She laughed her witchy laugh and Dean rolled his eyes, moving past her into the bathroom. He heard her continue on her way, humming some old waltzing tune under her breath.

 

His eyes slipped over his own face in the mirror, and he stopped.

 

With a jerk he turned and went back to the bedroom. Cas was still sleeping, back to him, and Dean crept over the threadbare rug to the nightstand and flipped open his phone.

 

September seventeenth glowed back at him in big white numbers.

 

Cas grumbled something, and Dean stared at the screen. He didn’t realize he’d sunk to the bed till the mattress squeaked, and Cas sat up, squinting at him over his shoulder.

 

“S’wrong?” he slurred, rubbing his face and yawning into his hand. It was barely ten o’clock and the heat was already starting to seep into the house, turning the air thick and soft.

 

When Dean didn’t answer Cas twisted around, the kicked-down sheets tangling at his feet.

 

“Dean? What’s the matter?” He yawned again, reaching out to drape his arm over Dean’s lap, head nuzzling into the softness of his side.

 

“We’re getting married tomorrow,” Dean said, blinking at the phone.

 

Cas paused and got to his knees, reaching over Dean’s shoulder to pull the phone closer to his face.

 

There was a heavy moment of pause. The phone’s weight fell back into Dean’s fingers as Cas sat slightly behind him, both of them considering it.

 

It was actually happening. It was the day before their wedding.

 

This time tomorrow they’d be getting ready, they’d be doing something, putting on clothes or something—Dean’s thoughts started to spiral and he shook his head.

 

Cas touched his forehead and then let his hand rake back through his dark hair, the strands sticking up as his fingers combed through them.

 

“Tomorrow.”

 

“Tomorrow,” Dean said, mirroring him, chancing a look at him.

 

He was sleep-rumpled and startled, but not in a bad way. It was a look generated by the complete surprise at the fact that time had managed to sneak up on them so easily. The dull murmur swelled to a roar.

 

Cas caught his eye, breaking out of his stupor. He came closer, hesitant, nosing at Dean’s jaw.

 

“Not to be redundant, but...we are getting _married_ tomorrow,” he whispered against Dean’s mouth, and Dean smiled, teasing Cas’ lips with his own.

 

Cas pulled back and laughed when Dean followed him.

 

“Tell me again,” Dean said, voice hushed, and Cas’ features softened as his hands wound through Dean’s hair, settling on the back of his neck.

 

“Tell you what?”

 

“About tomorrow,” Dean said, and smiled.

 

How many times had they gone over it, talked each other through it as they lay in bed, legs tangled? Close to a hundred, and Dean still insisted Cas tell him.

 

The river. The lights. The soft near-evening sky.

 

“By the time we’re done it will be close to dark,” Cas said, or breathed, nearing the end of his recounting. He tilted Dean’s face up to meet his, pulling it out of the crook of his neck where Dean had been mouthing, his hands wandering. They had eased down over the bare sheets mindlessly; Dean’s brain was too hung up in Cas’ words to register his other movements. “And then the reception, and after…”

 

Cas trailed away, and Dean stilled, looking down Cas’ body to where his hand was curled over his thigh.

 

“Dean.” Cas interrupted his thoughts, taking his chin between his fingers, forcing their eyes to meet again. He fitted his palm over the swell of Dean’s cheek. “Don’t worry about that now.”

 

“I’m not worried,” Dean murmured, nudging against Cas’ hand. “Just want you.”

 

“You already have me,” Cas breathed.

 

“Not the same,” Dean replied, kissing Cas’ collarbone before letting his body slip sideways, arms pulling Cas against his chest. “Not my husband.”

 

“My husband,” Cas said, trying it on his lips, meeting Dean’s eyes. “Tomorrow,” he added, hastily.

 

“Tomorrow,” Dean whispered.

 

Under Olivia’s insistence they were not allowed to remain in bed all day. Too much to do, too much to see to, and so they rolled from the room and did as they were told, following Olivia around like three lost puppies, carrying out their commanded orders. The work stretched out over the first half of the day, and once Olivia was satisfied, she let Sam and Dean go off on some personal errand, leaving her and Cas to nap off the heat of the day.

 

Cas didn't sleep. He sat on the bed and closed his eyes and imagined, a smile creeping over his face.

 

Sam and Dean appeared again at half past five, carrying brown bags full of penny candy to share, sporting the content, easy expressions that came from long talks about good things.

 

By some magic, or perhaps Olivia’s intentions, they forgot time again until it had snared them, and the day had waned until barely a sliver of it remained and there was a fluttering excitement about all of them that would not be suppressed.

 

“Sleep close. Tomorrow you won’t be seeing each other till the ceremony,” Olivia reminded them as they ate supper. “Bad luck to see each other before the wedding,” she explained.

 

“So why are you making us move rooms?” Dean teased. They remained at the table after the dishes, drinking coffee, watching smoke pillow from the end of Olivia’s cigarette. She occasionally indulged herself one or two as the sun set, nibbling on some cake she’d made or a bit of candied fruit. “Worried about the noise?”

 

She took a soft pull and chuckled, the sound deep and rough from the tobacco.

 

“Because I decided,” she tutted, flicking her ash into a saucer, and it very well could have ended there, but she tapped her nail against the table, eyes narrowing in thought. “That room is no good for the likes of you. No spirit in that room,” she said, and her gaze drifted out the window and then back to the faces seated around her table.

 

“Children better get to bed. Early to rise tomorrow, you hear me? None of that dallying all moony for each other, you lazy boys. I’ll come snatch that mashwarohn right from under your covers and make him fine for you,” she tittered, knocking her elbow into Cas’.

 

Cas smiled at Dean.

 

“He’s already quite fine,” he murmured, and only Dean really heard him, a light flush scattering over his face.

 

“Finer, then,” Olivia clarified. So maybe she had heard too. Cas didn’t mind.

 

They pushed back from the table and let Olivia kiss them goodnight, peppering their cheeks with soft touches, Baby heavy round her stooped shoulders.

 

“I’ll trust the other with you till it’s time then,” she said to Sam, nodding towards a Dean-distracted Cas.

 

They were joking with each other at the foot of the stairs, trying to burn off some of the excess energy they had accumulated all of a sudden.

 

“Got to tend to your brother myself, I think. Make sure he don’t go jumpin’ out of his skin on us,” Olivia finished.

 

Sam laughed and agreed to look after Cas, his own personal excitement bubbling up in his chest.

 

She patted his face, eyes so very fond.

 

“You’re my sweet boy, you know? My sweet, sweet boy,” she murmured, making him bend down to let her kiss him again before they all disappeared upstairs.

 

Before the dawn, before the light broke, sudden, brilliant, spectacular.

 

* * *

 

Olivia didn’t lie. She didn’t spare Dean, either. She forced him out of bed at seven with a sharp rap at the door and the promise of hot coffee and a full breakfast; it was good, since he was starved all of a sudden. Echoes of those old hungers, he supposed.

 

Not for long, he reminded himself. Cas looked up at him, drowsy, and grabbed his wrist as he tried to haul himself from the warm bed and into the cool morning air.

 

“Stay with me,” he said, and Dean had to pry his fingers off.

 

“I can’t – you know what she said. We probably shouldn’t even be talkin'…” he said, but Cas fisted his fingers into his shirt and yanked him back down, kissing his words quiet.

 

“This afternoon,” Cas murmured, kissing him again. “I’ll be the one saying my vows down by the river.”

 

Dean’s heart hammered.

 

“Really? Good thing. That’s where I’ll be too,” he whispered. Only a few more hours. A handful of time, and then he didn’t know. He had no clue what it would feel like, but he had never wanted to find out something more.

 

There was another sharp rap and Dean forced himself up and away into the blue light of the room. He shrugged on jeans and a shirt and slipped out of the room into the hallway where Olivia was waiting.

 

“Well now,” she said, mouth pulling back, her teeth gleaming in the dim corridor. “Let’s see what we can do to make a proper groom out of you!”

 

 

* * *

 

They had left a vast majority of the smaller details up to Olivia. She seemed to have more of a clue about the formalities than they ever did, and all the materials they’d need right in her house. She seemed to be always opening a trunk or a drawer or unlocking a bureau, and today was no different.

 

She bent over the hope chest she was rifling through, clucking her tongue. Baby’s tail hung out of one end, the snake nosing through the contents with her mistress, and Dean standing off to one side, watching, waiting, and bouncing on his heels.

 

He kept stealing looks out the window and peeking around the door, hoping for a glimpse of Cas, but the house was still, as if it had literally separated them into different realms the moment he had closed the bedroom door behind him.

 

“Try to get it out of your system now,” Olivia said, pushing through the clothes in front of her, looking for the ones she wanted. “Won’t do you any good to twitch like that when you’re in the water,” she finished, voice lilting up as she pulled a shirt out victoriously.

 

“Oh, this’ll do,” she muttered, holding the garment out from her. “Oh, this will do just fine, oh, yes.”

 

She nodded and waved him over, forced his arms out, and measured the clothing against his chest. She thought for a moment, studying him.

 

“You got those awful wide shoulders,” she sighed, “But I think this will do. Yes, I think this will do fine. Hopefully not too tight in the chest…”

 

She pushed the shirt into his arms and then went to searching through her nooks and crannies for the loose trousers she’d received as payment so long ago. Back when people didn’t have much to give but the clothes on their backs.

 

“So how’d you get a snake, anyway?” Dean said, running his fingers over the fabric, worrying it. His thumb caught on a button and he smiled.

 

“Same way I get everything,” she answered. “A gift.” She looked at the snake and smiled at it as it flicked its tongue out, curious. “Baby been mine since I first started this business. She’s old as I am, though she still naughty. She catches the mice and beasties for me and I put up with her.” She chuckled, and the snake bumped its head affectionately against her outstretched fingers.

 

“So, the book?”

 

“What of it?” she sighed, finding the trousers at last.

 

She straightened up and shook them out; she’d need to press them. She didn’t know why she’d waited so long for his clothes. Maybe it was the fear she wouldn’t be able to find ones to fit him. Castiel’s had been much easier – he could slip into just about anything. The pants she’d given him were a little loose, but Angelique’s old suspenders would fix that just fine.

 

“Was that a gift too?” Dean continued, and she fixed him with a look.

 

“Now why are you worryin’ about a thing like that today?”

 

“I have to talk about _something_ ,” Dean insisted, laughing. “Or I’ll go nuts.”

 

She pursed her lips and rolled her eyes. _Catfish_.

 

“You think I lie to you? I have old friends. Older than any old muddy fish,” she said breezily, holding her hand out for the shirt. He gave it back to her and she went to a closet and slid out her ironing board.

 

“Okay, so how did they get it?”

 

“That I don’t know,” she quipped, laying the shirt out on the board, letting the sleeves dangle, her bangles clacking together on her thin wrists. “Some magic, probably, knowing them.”

 

Dean sank into silence, considering this. He leaned against a dresser and watched her work. She was precise, and everything she did seemed effortless. Must have been from being so old.

 

One day, someday, he might actually be as old as she was. He’d never really planned on that, but now, it was such a great possibility. Old with Cas and Sam, grey and grizzled and grumpy, if Bobby’s example was anything to go by.

 

“I can hear you thinkin’ from all the way over here,” Olivia barked, glancing up at him. “You thinkin’ about good things, I hope.”

 

“Very good things,” Dean said, and smiled.

 

She nodded her head in satisfaction.

 

“So, about tonight—” he said, almost immediately after, and she cut him off, shushing him.

 

“No, no. You don’t worry about that. It’s all done.”

 

“But we haven’t _told_ anyone about this,” Dean insisted. She looked up, and stared blankly at him.

 

“What do you think I do here all day? You think I lounge around? No, it’s done. The ones that gonna come gonna come.”

 

She shook her head. Always tickled by his innocence to the bigger picture.

 

“Well,” Dean said, rambling, and she shushed him again.

 

“You tell me what you’re gonna do after all this. After you leave me.”

 

Dean paused.

 

Leave. He supposed that they would, eventually, but the thought had never confronted him till now. They’d leave here.

 

“I don’t know,” he said honestly, and she hummed in response. “We haven’t talked about it. I guess we’ll go to Bobby’s.”

 

“What do you want to do?” she prompted, still ironing, and Dean lost himself in watching her work.

 

“Build them a house,” he said, almost too quickly.

 

He flushed, looking away in disbelief that it was the first thing to come to his mind. Not hunting. Not to resume the old family business, to pick up where they left off. He wasn’t worried about it. He wasn’t even thinking about it.

 

She smiled.

 

“What kind of house?”

 

“An honest one,” Dean said. He would not allow himself to get caught up in the anxiety. He would let himself talk about it. Enjoy it. “A good, honest house.”

 

 

* * *

 

She finished pressing his clothes and helped him to change, and though he was usually so private about things like that he didn’t mind her extra pair of old hands straightening the seams on his shoulders, careful and loving.

 

“Don’t know why you bothered. It’s just going to get wet,” Dean said nervously, adjusting his collar before he continued buttoning, his fingers clumsy. She tsked and swatted him lightly on the back, moving around to push his hands out of the way to do it herself.

 

“You think I’m going to let you see him with wrinkled clothes? I promised I’d make you finer, didn’t I?”

 

“You did,” Dean remarked, and she fussed more, smoothing the fabric down till it pleased her.

 

“Right then,” she said with pride, sizing him up. Her old weathered hand patted his chest, smoothed over the fabric.

 

“ _That’s_ a fine man,” she murmured, moving out of the way so he could see himself in the mirror.

 

He wasn’t anything spectacular, he didn’t think. Good enough in the shirt and trousers, the thin leather belt. He rolled the sleeves of his shirt up in crisp cuffs and examined himself. She stood beside him, nearly glowing with pleasure at the sight of him.

 

“Make any mother proud,” she whispered, and Dean looked at her in the mirror, found her eyes.

 

“You think?”

 

She nodded, sagely.

 

“Oh, I know so.”

 

He nodded back to her, and let his hands hang down by his sides. It wouldn’t be long till he took his shoes off, felt the mud between his toes, when he’d meet the water again, offer himself back up to the river at last.

 

He didn’t look particularly special, but it didn’t matter to him. His eyes itched for Cas’ face, longed to see him standing there, up on the bank, wanted to trace the lines of him, see him waiting for him – the foretaste seized him up.

 

“How do you feel?” Olivia said gently, sensing his discomfort, the momentary thrash.

 

Dean stopped, suddenly transported to the Impala, just outside of St. Cloud.

 

Before the business of rivers, before kingfishers, before books and the hot august green of late summer. His little brother bent up in the backseat, Cas looking out the window at the bluffs, all of it up in the air, swirling above them.

 

Sam’s light voice trying to rile him up, get him going, childish and petulant, and all of them cramped – the fleeting thought a few minutes before that he should reach out, touch Cas’ knee, make sure it was alright, a thought he had immediately tamped down. He remembered the beginnings of an appetite starting to knot his stomach.

 

_“Well, tell us how you really feel, Dean.”_

 

He hadn’t known then. He’d been hardly able to come up with the bullshit response of hunger.

 

“…I—” he began, realized he was staring at himself in the mirror, wide-eyed, like he’d never seen his own face before.

 

“I feel happy,” he said. “I feel happy. And crazy – and I love him.”

 

He turned to Olivia, away from the mirror.

 

“I love him. I don’t think they have a word for how that makes me feel.”

 

He registered that he was grinning stupidly and tried to stop, but he couldn’t.

 

She laughed at him, came and brushed a speck of something invisible off of his front.

 

“Joy,” she said. “I think that one will suit you just fine.”

 

 

* * *

 

When Sam leaned into the open doorway of the room where Cas was dressing, in the thin quiet white light of foggy morning, the fallen angel was struggling with the back clasp of the suspenders he'd been given, his back turned.

 

“Need some help with that?” Sam asked, and Cas twisted his neck, smiled a little.

 

“If it's not too much trouble.”

 

Sam came inside.

 

The clasp of the suspenders was warm in his fingers; Cas tucked his thumbs beneath the straps and held them up for him, and carefully he tried to pry it open to fit it against the hem of Castiel's trousers.

 

“Sam?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I want to thank you,” Cas said, his voice gone soft. His head was leaning to one side, the pale expanse of his neck raised to the room.

 

Sam chuckled. “It's just a suspender clasp.”

 

“No. Not for that.”

 

Sam paused; his eyes flickered up to the edge of Castiel's jaw in the light.

 

Cas took a breath.

 

“You know,” he said, “if it weren't for you...I don't think we'd have made it here.”

 

The metal prongs were sharp as Sam dug his fingertips into them. Stiffer than they looked.

 

“Sure, you would have,” he said softly.

 

“Don't—don't.”

 

Sam fell quiet.

 

“Really,” Cas continued, his words as thin and gentle as the light itself, “if it weren't for you, Dean and I...Dean and I would never have met in the first place.”

 

Sam bit his lip. He focused on unsticking the buckle, tried not to give leeway to the warm feeling pulling up in his chest, tried not to say anything else self-deprecating. Castiel's voice was too sincere for that. Too full of the truth of it.

 

If there had never been Sam's life to save—if Dean hadn't loved him too much—Castiel might never have entered the picture.

 

Their souls might still be lost. Thrashing and flying and blowing about, looking for their skins.

 

“Yeah,” Sam said, quietly. “I guess you're right.”

 

There. It came undone; he pushed it into the small of Cas' back, clamped it shut.

 

“I only wanted to say,” Cas said, turning around to face him once the buckle was in place, “that—I am extraordinarily blessed to be counted as your brother.”

 

Sam stared at him a moment, his hands still uncertain of themselves in midair, and then he smiled, just a little bit, just softly.

 

“Me too,” he said. It came out more hoarsely than he'd intended, caught a little on some snare of emotion; he blinked back the sudden heat in his eyes.

 

He let his hands rest on Cas' shoulders for just a moment, big and splayed on the white fabric of his shirt, and Cas tilted his head, met his smile.

 

“I'm—I'm really glad to have you, Cas.”

 

He didn't have to think much about what he did next—merely acted, pulling Cas in tight in a hug so all-encompassing that Cas thought he might drown in it. He returned the embrace, face pressed against Sam's shoulder, their palms flat against one another's backs.

 

“And I can't think of anyone I'd rather see Dean with,” Sam said.

 

They clapped one another on the shoulder, and pulled a little apart, and smiled at each other.

 

“You guys—I'm really, really proud of you guys,” Sam said, fighting now not to cry—it was so overwhelming, the mere idea of it, that within hours his brother and his best friend would be _married_. Finishing, he thought, something so much bigger than themselves. Finishing the road they'd been on for so many years now, the one he'd always rather imagined—always rather hoped—would lead to something like this, today.

 

He couldn't imagine anything brighter. He really couldn't.

 

“Well,” Cas said, “it's your blessing that matters most. To Dean and to me, I know.”

 

“Hell—you've got it,” Sam said, laughing a little, laughing mostly so that he wouldn't dissolve. Cas looked so neat, held together so well, eyes brighter than Sam had ever seen them, joy on his face like Sam had never witnessed. “You've definitely got that.”

 

For a moment longer they stood there—brothers still in suggestion, now, but soon to be brothers in name—until Sam softly said, “I should be—I should be getting out there.”

 

“Yeah.” Cas nodded, breathing in, and Sam touched his shoulder once more, a little dizzy with the radiance of him.

 

“I'll—I'll see you out there, then,” he said. He could scarcely believe what he was saying.

 

Cas watched him go, watched his broad familiar back vanish out the door, and then he sat down very carefully on the armchair in the corner, and touched his fingers to his lips, and closed his eyes.

 

Soon.

 

 

* * *

 

Muddy water.

 

Red water; blood of the land, rising to meet him.

 

Lapping like a friendly dog at his feet, urging, pulling, tugging the hem of his trousers, the fabric going dark where it touched with its wet hold. It slipped up the banks, sliding out of the channel, reaching for him.

 

Olivia waited in the shallows, her shawl spread out, the fringe caught in the eddies and flows, like a black pansy bobbing on the current. The early evening warmth was baked into the ground under him and he stared at his bare feet on the bank, the heat spreading up through his heels and into the rest of him. His fingers twitched at his sides and his heart lurched and leapt in his chest, plagued by a constant shiver of sensation.

 

“You ready?” Sam asked, softly, beside him, and Dean nodded, felt his brother’s hands on his shoulders.

 

“You totally got this.” Sam’s hand squeezed, encouraging him.

 

It was one of those strange moments where Dean thought, honestly thought, that he would never move. He’d be stuck there, forever, hovering on the edge of the water; or maybe he would wake up and it would all be over, the grand and glorious dream.

 

He closed his eyes against the glare of the drifting sun, against the world, afraid for that strange moment.

 

The story always said how the catfish came out of the water, but it never explained how much it hurt to get in.

 

He swallowed, steeled himself.

 

Cas’ face was the first thing to surface from the recess of his mind.

 

Cas – in all his facets, humble and holy, big and small. Gestures, gentleness, aggressive and confident, the timidity of his smile, the curious color of his eyes—stuck somewhere between cornflower and wide sky, or maybe even forget-me-nots or delftware pottery—Dean could never decide for certain. The features of his words, so calculated and precise beside the trip of his own tongue, every sentence cased with crystals; the geometry of his name, like amethyst, consonants perfectly square, solid and real and entire.

 

The repeated perfection of Cas saying his name, saying he loved him, calling to him.

 

 _Do not be afraid_.

 

The blister of Hell and the whisper that was not from a human mouth, but Cas all the same. Perhaps diamonds did fall from his lips when he spoke as an angel. Sapphires, with all their splendid angles.

 

_Don’t be afraid._

 

_I have found you._

 

He would find him again. He wouldn’t be lost in the river. There was a man on the shore waiting for him, waiting to guide him out, with a light to coax him to shore. He would not be stranded there. He would not be alone.

 

He took a step into the water and his body trembled. The water roiled; it swirled around his knees, the mud and silt sucking down his feet. It splashed up his legs as he walked to where Olivia stood, hands folded prayer-like at her chest.

 

He walked, and felt himself cry quietly, absently, the tears slipping calmly down his face.

 

The pain was a soft one. An acknowledgment of old familiar feelings, of the anguish he had carried so long, a lonely howl the river knew and soothed, tonguing at his clothes.

 

He wondered what the watchers would think. He had seen them, back, in the trees, their heads bowed in meditation, in respect. Not many. But faces he knew. Soon they would gather closer, pressing down to watch the wedding, following the shining footprints of a fallen star.

 

Olivia received him, her arms opening to take his hands.

 

There was a moment of complete silence when he fitted his fingers against hers.

 

“You have shouldered the hunger,” she said. Ceremonious. He wondered briefly what gospel she spoke from. “You have swallowed the cries of a lonesome world. You gave up your hands, your body, your heart. You became a river; a catfish; a king; a need.”

 

She squeezed their hands.

 

“You became mystery – a muddy, dark thing too clever for men, too heavy for nets. The water ran red with your blood, the depths were blue with your loneliness, with your sadness. You colored this earth in tall trees and canyons. From your waters came fruit, the gardens of the earth, and you fed many.”

 

She cupped her hands, anointed him with water, blessed him, smoothed it back over his hair, most of it slipping down over the sides of his face, catching on the bridge of his nose, his eyelashes.

 

“Love has moved through you,” she whispered, her wet fingers coming to frame either side of his face. She spoke only to him, their eyes never straying from each other. “Love will always move through you. It has carved out places in this good earth and it has carved you up and turned you inside out. It’s time to lay down your sorrow.”

 

Her voice was hypnotic. She stroked his cheeks with her thumbs.

 

“It’s time to put to rest this tired soul and share the burden of your weariness. Only for love will you change. Only for love will you free yourself from this cage, and only for love will you make peace with these things. You understand that?”

 

“I understand.” His voice surprised him, deep, calm. The river had ceased its churning but skimmed placidly over him, caressing him.

 

He caught her eyes moving over his shoulder. Up – drifting. Up the slope.

 

The careful footfalls; the imperceptible rustle of the dirt under steady feet; Olivia looked back at Dean, and for a moment she seemed sad. As if she knew she would not be seeing his face like this ever again. She knew he’d be different when he walked out of that water. He would have to be. He wouldn't be a catfish much longer.

 

But he was still the same.

 

He was still Dean Winchester, with every argumentative and stubborn streak. He still loved his brother, his car, hot pie. And the way Cas looked in Missouri sunlight, leaning out the side of a pickup truck as the wind ruffled through his hair and his shirt, the bump of his vertebrae under Dean’s fingers.

 

He may have been a catfish once, but his soul was entirely his own. He was the same man, the same river, if rivers were to be like men. A clear river, one not so clouded with suffering.

 

His eyes drifted closed and she moved her hands to his shoulders, turning him around to face the embankment. He took a breath.

 

“You have slept for a long time in the cold dark,” she murmured, and it enfolded him. Her voice, the rush of river water through the gaps in his splayed fingers, the cling of his wet clothes like a second skin, the dull black behind his eyelids, the way his heart was pounding out a staccato rhythm, bumping against his lungs and rattling his ribcage. A flood of blood and heartbeat in his ears, whiting it all out for a moment.

 

“Let there be light again.”

 

Inhale.

 

Exhale.

 

The crack of eyes in bright light, the catch of the sun on white clothes, on lean lines, on soft dark hair, the shine and glimmer and light – so much light.

 

Cas. A vision on the bank, standing, waiting, watching him. Glowing under the fainting sun and their eyes met and Dean was already moving—moth to a flame, drawn to the promise of so much. The one who had come far for him, who was dusty-footed and wise, who had come to take his hand; come to be with him; come to walk with him; come to know him.

 

The water parted before him, giving him easy passage.

 

He saw Cas pull in a shuddering breath, his mouth open, and paused in the shallows. Mere feet from the body he wanted so desperately to reach out and hold.

 

Vows.

 

There were vows.

 

Dean sank back onto his heels, and met Castiel's eyes, there on the shore. Took in the whole of him in the space between the turn and the silence before they would speak. Let his eyes pull from the small metal lantern Cas was holding in his hand to the lines of his face—and through no mutual understanding, or any signal from the bank or from the water, triggered only by some minute flicker of their eyes over one another, they spoke.

 

Dimly Dean was aware that they hadn't rehearsed this. In fact he had no earthly idea what the vows were even meant to be, until he was saying them, until he was pulling them up from the Hymnal's pages where they lay in his mind, in the latent spaces of his memory, until he was speaking them in tandem with Castiel. Suddenly, and perfectly.

 

“ _Where lies my soul_ ,” they said—perhaps one beat off from one another but breathing, and falling into rhythm soon, drifting like the water drifted, “ _there lies your soul—in my heart there is your heart—in my eyes there are your eyes. For we are two stones in the same hand._ ”

 

Dean saw him swallow something back, and Castiel's eyes were wide, so wide, wide enough, he thought, to hold the whole universe, and perhaps to hold him, as well.

 

He didn't have to bid the words to come, or make them up. They were already there, like ink on the back of his tongue.

 

In all the holy scripts Dean had ever read in his life, he thought, he had never pronounced any so easily.

 

He seemed almost made of them.

 

“ _You have woken me from my deep sleeping_ ,” he said, he whispered—he stumbled a little on the formality of it but kept on. “ _And I am awash on the shore, and the shore—is your embrace. And I shall not sleep again except beside you, and I shall lie nowhere except with you._ ” Nervous, almost, he pressed his hands palms down against his thighs for a moment, and swallowed, and lifted his head. “ _For you—you have washed the mud from my feet, and you have made me new in the light of your love, and I—will be your field, and I will be your path, and I will be—your house—and all you are is wedded to me, my patient bridegroom._ ”

 

Something in the world seemed to lift, or perhaps it was only the rising of his heart into his throat.

 

Cas was looking on him with such pride, he felt, and he smiled and tipped his head, just a little, in encouragement, and though Cas' voice broke on his own first words it came again strong and smooth.

 

“ _You have drawn me down from my perch_ ,” Castiel said. “ _I am alight on the riverbank, and the bank is your body. And I shall not sleep again except beside you, and I shall lie nowhere except with you, for you have kissed the dust from my wings—and you have made me new in the light of your love, and I will be your sky, and I will be your sun, and I will be your resting place, and all you are is wedded to me, my patient bridegroom._ ”

 

“ _I, a fish, am become man that I may walk beside you,_ ” Dean said, and he took a step forward in the water.

 

“ _I, a star, am become man that I may walk beside you._ ” Cas' fingers tightened on the lantern's hasp, eyes wide with it, incredible with it.

 

“ _I am become flesh that I may love you._ ”

 

No more muddy skin. Thrashing fins. He remembered, violently, the blades in his hands, the screams and the flesh of Hell, knee-deep not in pure water but in blood, and lifting his face to the blaze that whispered: _cast off your demon skin. You are saved._

 

“ _I am become bone that I may love you,_ ” Castiel said, as if in a dream.

 

No more cold sky, seeking arms, no more wide and wailing loneliness, no. He thought of the trembling of the songs in the heavens, the percussion crash of falling, clouds of blue smoke, bolted doors. Two strong arms that enfolded him, lips on his cheek that murmured _: lay your wings down, brother. I am here._

 

 _“I thirst for your kiss_ ,” Dean said, nearing the shore, now, walking as if he were only now remembering how to walk, “ _for your mouth is as wine—I shall be your cup and you shall pour into me, overflowing...thirst no more, for I shall fill you, and you shall want for nothing._ ”

 

He could picture it. _Meant_ it. Wanted to slip right out of the water and into him and never leave him, never, never.

 

“ _I thirst for your kiss for your mouth is a cup_ ,” Cas said, and swayed a little on his feet. “ _I shall be your drink and I shall pour into you, overcome...thirst no more, for I shall hold you, and you shall want for nothing._ ”

 

Giving themselves, now. Freely, now. Binding themselves with their words, golden and perfected. They could almost see them, forming from air, from dust, from water, luminescent, like so many fireflies, drawing them closer. Sloughing away their apprehensions. All of this, all of it, to their eyes, now, a shining thing, a vast splendor, tightening.

 

“ _I am a catfish swimming_ ,” Dean said, “ _and a net breaking. Let me come out of the water that I may walk beside you._ ”

 

“ _I am a kingfisher crying,_ ” Cas said, tears, now, on his face, in the catches of his smile, “ _and a river overflowing. Let me be flesh that I may walk beside you._ ”

 

“ _I have waited long,_ ” said Dean. “ _My heart was heavy, but now it is light. I have traced your glow with my wanting._ ” The mud, now. Feet plying the silt, and the water coming away. “ _Oh, husband_ —”

 

He stumbled on that but did not choke upon it. Rather held it like something crystalline in the tight palms of his hands. Worshiped it.

 

“ _—come from the skies._ ”

 

“ _I have walked far_ ,” said Castiel, barely a whisper; “ _my sandals were new, but now they are worn. I have traced your shadow with my longing._ ”

 

He swallowed hard and trembled when he said, “ _Oh, husband, come from the water._ ”

 

And it broke.

 

Dean stepped up onto the bank, unable to hold himself back any longer, and he took those few steps towards him—Castiel, holding his unlit lantern, face wet with tears and smile so joyous it nearly knocked Dean breathless.

 

And they stood, very suddenly, toe to toe; and the sun was slipping down from the sky like a fish from a net; and to their left, past the heated nearness of their bodies, was Sam; and farther past were the watchers, the faces they knew, the faces they had met, but all of it falling away, all of it curling gently back like smoke over water.

 

Leaving them, together, and their heartbeats—steady, and rhythmic. Pulsed and driven by the same life that had stirred their souls over all these millenia, pushing them forward through skin after skin, and now—magnetic in their proximity, beating staccato, one filling up the empty spaces left by the other, until there was no heartbeat at all—merely the thrum of one life, passing through two bodies. Merely one hum, one vibrating existence, matched, pouring and churning over itself like so much water over so many stones, and it trembled through the flickering of their eyelids, coiled like electricity through the hues of their eyes, static lightning, it seemed, contained only by the rise and fall of their lungs, and there was no one else, and there was nothing else.

 

There were no watchers. No brother. No woman in the shallows.

 

Only a man, who had been a catfish; only a man, who had been a star.

 

The two of them. _Men_ , now.

 

And two hands clasped over the hanging ring of the unlit lantern.

 

In the periphery of their silence, Dean saw the single match slide from Castiel's palm, and watched it, hypnotized, as it struck against the metal of the lantern, and flared into being.

 

“ _How long shall you love me?_ ” he whispered—they whispered—as much in tandem now as the rushing of their hearts, and the sloe-dark beating of the night falling in.

 

Just as much together, as if they were by their very voices bound eternal, as the lantern hasp was opened, and Castiel's match found the wick of the candle inside—just as much together as the lamp was lit, and light surged up through the pocked holes in its surface—just so did they whisper, falling close together.

 

“ _Till the end of all days._ ”

 

They raised the lantern up.

 

High, high above their heads, as far as they could reach, until it dangled softly triumphant there.

 

And slowly did the world cascade inside again.

 

For a breathless moment there was silence—and then the slim hiss of the river; and then a sound like rain that gathered and built and broke and they realized, entrapped though they were in the gazes of one another, that it was applause; that Sam, and all the others, the few privy faces on the bank, were clapping, and then they were shouting, praises, it seemed, and Dean did not look at them, had eyes only for Castiel, and with his free arm he swung his grip round his waist and pulled him in tight and kissed him as he had never kissed another soul in his life.

 

Cas shifted to let him in, and they kissed there in the mud with the lantern of their marriage swinging in their hands above their heads as the dusk dripped in like ink from the east, and within their skeletons it seemed two kindred things moved against their ribs and reached out, and that they touched within the touching of their lips. Reunited, finally, at last, at long last.

 

“ _Husband_ ,” Castiel whispered, on the breath that broke them only for a moment, and when they raised their eyes past the lighthouse glow of the lantern they saw only stars in the wide black quickening night, the velvet blanket of the great Crescent City, only bombast sparks of heavenly light scattered like salt upon a tapestry.

 

A shiver took his body, and Dean's arm around his waist; and held there, looking up into the universe under which he was, at last, what he was meant to be—with such joy in his heart that he could hardly believe it real, Castiel began to laugh.

 

 

* * *

 

Castiel smoothed his hands down Dean’s chest. Band music was leaking through the walls and the crack at the bottom of the door. The slide of a trombone and the jazzy flutter of a trumpet and the muffled chatter of _people_. So many people.

 

Walking with them back up to Olivia’s house, Sam’s arms around them, though he kept having to wipe at his face—

 

“Dean,” Cas chastised, working the buttons open, but his voice was weak. He tilted his head, letting it tip against his shoulder, as Dean trailed soft open-mouthed kisses up his neck. Dean didn’t seem to hear him, or didn’t seem to care. Cas’ breath hitched, Dean’s hands sliding down to the dip of his lower back, the swell of his ass, pulling him in.

 

Castiel focused on peeling the wet shirt from Dean's arms, the skin damp and cool and smooth. His fingers ghosted over his collarbone, the rounds of his shoulders, his arms, till he had worked the shirt off of him and picked up the other Olivia had set out.

 

“Let’s go upstairs,” Dean whispered in his ear, and Cas had to shake his head, even as he let the garment start to dangle from his fingers, arms around Dean. Their cheeks rasped against each other, mouths hovering close, brushing just enough, noses bumping.

 

“We can’t,” Cas said breathlessly. “We can’t – we have to play host. We have to, Dean…all those…”

 

His voice broke as Dean kissed him, hands dragging up his back, fingernails pulling wrinkles on his shirt and pushing under his suspenders.

 

“All those people—” Once he had gotten his mouth released. “All those people…”

 

He knew he was rambling, losing himself.

 

Dean was intoxicating. He was everywhere, all around him. Stripping his pants had been a test of all Cas’ willpower; Dean’s shivering had been a good motivation for getting him dressed again, for rubbing the towel over his body, for kissing little snatches of bared skin. He'd thought it would be enough for a few hours, but he was starting to wonder if he and Dean would be able to last the next twenty minutes.

 

By some grace he managed to coax Dean into the dry shirt, fumbling with the buttons. He tucked it in, hands lingering under the waistband of Dean’s new trousers, mouth drawn to the chest exposed through the bit he’d left open.

 

Dean whimpered, hand threading through Cas’ hair. He didn’t care about a party. He didn’t care about anything – he hated it. He hated the second skin of their clothes. He wanted to rid himself of them; he wanted to undress Cas, see him, feel him against him, bare and open. He knew Cas wanted the same; he was just more hung up on the hospitality.

 

They were standing in Olivia’s little laundry room. The night was cool and fragrant.

 

“Promise me,” Dean whispered against Cas’ ear, soft and pleading. “Promise me as soon as this is done I can have you. I want you – please, Cas, I’m gonna lose my mind…”

 

Cas brought himself as close as their clothes would allow, trying to regain his senses. Something to focus on other than Dean, Dean’s arms and Dean’s hands, his mouth, the slight pressure across their pelvises.

 

“I swear,” Cas said. “I swear you can have me. Dean, I’m yours.”

 

Dean rolled his hips and Cas arched, his words falling into thin air.

 

“The party,” he said distantly, after a moment. They had been kissing again, deep and slow, and Dean broke away with something like irritation.

 

“Just for a little,” Cas insisted, his breathing ragged, almost frantic, convincing himself as well as Dean that this was only temporary, a pause before what was lingering beyond Olivia’s fairy-lit backyard. “Only a little and then you can have me.”

 

They were silent, eyes locked, and Dean brought his hands to Cas’ face, expression serious.

 

“I’m gonna make you so happy,” he whispered. “I will.”

 

Cas’ features fell into a smile, arms looping around Dean’s waist, the fever quieted for a moment.

 

He didn’t need to tell Dean that he already did make him happy.

 

They swayed slightly, as if they were dancing already.

 

* * *

 

They were heralded by cheers that reduced them to a sudden shyness. They seemed to fold into one another, bashful and blinded by the bright faces of all their company.

 

Olivia glided towards them, her dress clouding around her as she walked in billows of deep color. She did not seem to have many words for them at first, gesturing them to let her kiss them as she always did. She pinched their cheeks a little and swatted them, emotion brimming in her eyes, fighting her decision not to cry.

 

“You did good,” she warbled after a moment, kissing Cas again. “You did real fine.”

 

She snapped a dark handkerchief out from where it was tucked in the folds of her gown and dabbed at her eyes, annoyed when smudges of her makeup came off with the tears.

 

Sam was standing right behind her in an instant, looking, in a way only Sam Winchester seemed capable of managing, like a nine year old boy trapped inside his hulking body. His face was bright and emotional and young as he grabbed up his brother, breathing hard, gripping Dean’s shoulders while Dean hushed him, laying an unapologetic kiss on his temple.

 

“It’s okay, Sammy,” Dean said, as his brother clung to him.

 

Sam shook his head, pulling back and swiping violently at his eyes with the backs of his wrists.

 

“No!” he said, laughing nasally. “No – no, it’s okay! I’m fine! I really – I’m fine, I’m just super—just—”

 

He cut himself off and Dean smiled.

 

“Happy?”

 

“Fucking – overjoyed?” Sam exhaled, rubbing his nose. “Really freaking proud, and happy, and, yeah, just—like—” He shrugged his huge shoulders, palms up in disbelief. “You guys look great, I mean— _really_ great, and I feel—amazing? I feel, like – fucking amazing!”

 

His emotions got the better of him, and his voice cracked and he swallowed, looking between Cas and Dean as if he didn’t know whether to cry or kiss them.

 

“We couldn’t have done it without you, Sam,” Cas reminded him, and Sam immediately reached out and snared him in a hug that nearly had him lifted off the ground.

 

“Guys, there are so many people here,” Sam said, after he'd returned a breathless Cas to solid ground, regaining a little of himself. “Yann’s here, and Kami and Momoko, and who else—the Byrnes, they’re here—I don’t know _how_ – I mean, like, _how_?”

 

“Magic,” Olivia said, interjecting, having been watching the interactions with a too-pleased smile. “Plain old magic.”

 

“Okay, yeah, magic,” Sam agreed, eyes bugging out. “I don’t know, but they’re here, and there’s so much food, it’s like everyone brought some, which makes total sense, I guess, Riverlanders, you know—”

 

“What about that girl?” Dean said, and Sam stopped, his hands hanging out in dramatic gesture. Dean watched his brother’s expression twist into something strange.

 

“What girl?” he stuttered, a flush instantly coming to his face.

 

Dean peered intently into Sam’s eyes.

 

“Don’t even try to ‘what girl’ me, Sammy,” Dean said, raising his eyebrows; Sam’s blush deepened and he coughed nervously into his hand. “So where is she? Didn’t you tell her to come?”

 

“Lily,” Cas corrected, also looking at Sam, curious. “Her name is Lily.”

 

“Lily,” Dean said. “Where is she? You’ve been calling her every day for two weeks, so where is she?”

 

“She, uh…” Sam trailed off, shifting in his shoes. He felt thirteen and _ridiculous_. “She couldn’t get away. She’s got to work and so she couldn’t come. But she sends her best wishes and she’s really excited about you two and everything…so…”

 

“She’s not interested?” Dean said, frowning.

 

Sam shook his head.

 

“It’s—complicated,” he sighed, shoulders sagging. “She’s – we’ve worked something out. For now.”

 

“Do you love her?” Cas asked, intent, and Sam cleared his throat.

 

“Ah – yeah. Yeah, I think I do,” he mumbled, half laughing it, and Cas smiled sympathetically.

 

“Well, whatever you wanna do, Sammy,” Dean said, and Sam looked caught off guard by how serious Dean’s voice was. “Really,” Dean continued. “Whatever you wanna do about her – that’s fine with me, and I know it’s good with Cas. Don’t worry about the job or anything, okay? Don’t – just don’t worry about that stuff anymore. We’ll work it out for you. Whatever we need to do, we’ll do it.”

 

“Thanks,” Sam whispered, and Dean touched his shoulder, squeezing affectionately. It was only now in the wake of everything that it seemed possible, that things could _work out_.

 

“Hey, don’t mention it. You get to have the happy ending too, dreamboat. Lily or no Lily.”

 

Sam laughed and shuffled, grinning at the ground.

 

Dean fidgeted in the lull and Cas pressed against his side, cheek against his shoulder, glancing up at all the lights strung overhead – a canopy of artificial stars, but beautiful nonetheless.

 

“ _Dean_!”

 

The voice broke the quiet, familiar and wheezing, and Dean and Cas turned in tandem to see a flushed Yann Olsson tripping towards them. He was wearing a sports coat that was easily two sizes too big for him, and he kept pausing to push the sleeves up as he walked to them, eyes wide in his white face

 

“You guys!” he cried, once he was close enough, slinging his long, bony arms around their necks and hugging them. “You guys! You guys – you guys, _you guys_.”

 

“Yann—” Dean rasped; the boy’s elbow was pinching his throat. “Yann, buddy, you’re killin’ me here.”

 

Yann released them and rocked back on his heels, smile as huge and glowing as a crescent moon.

 

“You guys were _so_ cool,” the teenager began. “You were so cool – you were so great. Like – super. Like ultra great super cool – like, oh man, like – so cool.”

 

“Yann, are you drunk?” Castiel asked, and Yann shrugged, flapping his arms.

 

“I don’t know!” he said, laughed, and Sam’s eyes squinted in second-hand embarrassment. “Yeah – I think I am. Champagne – wow, _killer stuff_ , but _listen_ , okay, listen to me—”

 

Dean winced, opening his mouth to say something, but Yann held a finger to his lips. The former werewolf took Dean’s face in his hands. “Listen,” he said, as serious as an oracle. “You were _a total douche_ – Dean, okay, just, yeah, you were – you were a douche, total douche, okay, but, but—now, we are cool. I understand. I get it, and oh man, I’m like—so proud, okay? Way major proud. Me and my mom are so wicked proud – wow – wow, like, okay?”

 

“…thanks, Yann,” Dean said, carefully extracting himself from Yann’s grip.

 

“Don’t mention it!” Yann answered, chipper, waving his hand dismissively. “You guys really changed it for everyone – you don’t know yet, but you did – you totally did. Everyone, people like me, we’re all different now. We’re all deeper now, and it’s 'cause of you guys. So proud.”

 

The kid was starting to ramble, and Sam quickly cleared his throat and stepped around Dean and Cas to touch the boy’s shoulder.

 

“Let’s get you a Sprite or something, buddy,” he grunted, directing Yann to some long white-linen covered table.

 

Dean and Castiel stepped closer to one another, watching the boy raise his fist in the air triumphantly.

 

“Sprite? _Hell_ yes!” he exclaimed, and Dean shook his head.

 

“Kid’s a mess,” he mumbled, and Cas tucked himself closer to Dean’s side, skimming his nose along Dean’s shoulder and his neck.

 

“Mmm…” he hummed absently, more interested in the warmth of Dean’s chest under his splayed hand. “He’s kind, and good.”

 

“Yeah,” Dean said, covering the hand over his heart with his own.

 

Maybe it was the realization of the vast fairytale; maybe it was the night air, or the river, but the world seemed to be made of wind-up-toys. The guests floated by or held their drinks and conversed, operating around them, unreal. Dean and Castiel were hardly aware of them, concerned with the sensation of their hands caressing over each other, their eyes, the draw of their mouths.

 

The crowd parted, and as the lilt of a single violin struck up, Matsu Kami glided forward, his dear companion at his side, very much a girl. Like Olivia, his dark clothes blended in with the night, but the kimono made his hair seem silver as the moon sitting low and round in the clouds. Momoko was dressed far brighter, the colors and pictures spread across her robes vivid as the sunset.

 

“So you have made it,” he said, in his forest voice, and Dean looked to him. The old man bowed deeply and then he lifted his head, straightening his robes.

 

“I had all the confidence in you,” he said, and smiled, and his eyes twinkled, dark and mysterious.

 

“Thanks,” Dean said roughly, clearing his throat.

 

Castiel looked at Momoko, who was shyly holding something against her chest. She met his eyes and and smiled, holding out a slender envelope of textured paper with a bright red and gold string tied around it, calligraphy characters written lengthwise down one side. Next, she held out a thin wooden case between her hands, bowing her head modestly as she did so.

 

“Gifts,” Matsu Kami said, waving his hand gracefully at them. “Traditional, but I doubt you will mind.”

 

“We’re pretty old-fashioned,” Dean said, as Cas took the presents, passing one of them to Dean. He looked at Kami and gestured with the envelope.

 

“Shugi-bokuro. You may open later, but the other—” He nodded at the wooden box, and Dean slid open the cover.

 

A fan lay inside, folded, its polished wooden handle soft and smooth to the touch.

 

“To show our happiness,” Momoko said, as Dean lifted it out, unfolding it. Stretched across the frame was a beautiful depiction of cherry trees, their dark branches converging upwards into a mass of pale pink petals shimmering with touches of gold and white.

 

“There is more,” Kami said resolutely, reaching into the folds of his robes to withdraw a few strings of white hemp.

 

They eyed them curiously and Kami insisted they receive them.

 

“For strong family, and old age,” he chuckled, tapping his own silver-white head.

 

“Thank you,” Castiel said. “Thank you for all you have done for us.”

 

“It is nothing.” Kami-sama waved it away, slipping his hands back into his sleeves, nearly a nervous habit.

 

“It is odd,” he continued, glancing at Momoko, who was beaming, but trying to contain it for the sake of modesty. “Before this business of you two, I was, as you say, _hell-bent_ on not being a part of this world, but.” He shrugged. “We are all part of this world. It was merely a choice of whether or not I would be good or bad.”

 

He reached out to and tucked a strand of Momoko’s hair behind her ear affectionately, and her smile came unhidden, and she grinned.

 

“There is much good in this world,” Kami-sama continued. “It is a good that is worthy of all my time, and my powers, and my wisdom. I should like to remain a long time in it.”

 

There was a rest of silence, and then, the violin broke the quiet – a sweet sound.

 

“If you will excuse us.” Matsu Kami bowed. “I should like to go closer and hear this lovely music. Come along, Momoko.” Together they drifted away.

 

Nate Byrne’s violin floated back through the air, sweet, trembling largo, and Castiel found Dean’s hand. They abandoned the gifts on a table, grateful but unconcerned. The tightness of their clothes was bordering on the unbearable, everything pressing in, not open enough, not naked enough.

 

“Come on,” Cas said in a hush, tugging Dean’s fingers.

 

The party went on, clockwork, beautiful, and they knew they wouldn’t be missed.

 

 

* * *

 

Into the house, cool, dark, quiet, the stairs creaking under their feet as they crept, not wanting to disturb the furniture or the rugs or the dark lamps; up to the second flight, to the tip top of the house, the sealed door clicking open as Cas turned the knob.

 

A dry rustle from the huge and grand and open window – the white sheets folded back on the foot of the bed – a beautiful bed.

 

Pale green weathered wood and a thick mattress. There was a bit of an inhale in the room, the furniture, it seemed, the bedstead, the dressing table, the violets on the sideboard under the window sill, all of them straightening from their crooked postures.

 

A gesture of welcome to the guests.

 

The moonlight – the violets dripping silver – the vase, the darkness suddenly not-black, but indigo, deep, deep indigo, threads of starlight needlepointing the great spread of sky over the swamp. Cypress trees shimmering in the distance, windows of river between the branches, and the door shut and Dean’s back against it and Cas’ mouth hot on his own.

 

“Let me,” Cas whispered, touching Dean’s open collar, parting it, fingers trailing down his chest, undoing the buttons, hands unfolding, fingers fanned as they pushed the cotton aside, mapped over his chest and up over his shoulders. Dean’s head rolled against the door, Cas’ lips at his neck, down to his collarbone.

 

Cas’ knees slowly bending, his cheek pressed against Dean’s heartbeat. He sank to his knees on the ground, nuzzling at Dean’s stomach, the dip just under his breastbone, the swell of his hips. The shirt rustled and fell to the floor over Dean’s hands, and Cas slid his fingers into the metal clasp of his belt, pressed his face into the crease of his hip, hands tightening as they slid down the backs of Dean’s legs.

 

Dean’s fingers found their way into Cas’ hair, and he moaned, soft. Cas’ hands palming him, sliding up and down, feeling over him in between the motions of unbuttoning his fly. Dean kicked off his shoes, shoved them aside, foot catching on his abandoned shirt.

 

Glorious warmth of Cas' body against his, the softness of his mouth and his fingers and Dean’s hands threading into his hair and smoothing over his forehead and cheeks and down his neck, tipping his face up to look at him.

 

“Cas,” Dean murmured, and Cas stood again, sliding his body up Dean’s, and Dean pushed the suspenders off, let them fall to Cas’ sides, tugged at his shirt and untucked it, rucking it up, their hips meeting briefly. They breathed, fitted their mouths together; wind, and the violets shuddered in their vase.

 

A clumsy fumble, Dean’s trousers slung low over his hips. He walked Cas back to the bed, eased him down so he could drop before him and untie his shoes, pull his socks off, kiss his ankles, slide his face against his calf, kiss his knee through the cloth, Cas’ hands in his hair, on his shoulders, singing soft and silent praises.

 

 _How fine_. How fine he was, how strong, how beautiful, how good and glorious.

 

He curled down over Dean, hands soft on his jaw. He kissed his brow, his nose, each eyelid, his cheeks, the corners of his mouth.

 

They kissed, tongues rolling, and Dean pushed up, laid him flat on the bed, rocking his hips slowly against Cas’, feeling him lift up to meet him, mouths parting for a spare moment, breath thin.

 

“My husband,” Cas whispered, and Dean stuttered, helping Cas to work out of his shirt, throwing it behind them, bare chests flush, heartbeats vibrating against one another, blurring together.

 

They lost the rest of their clothes in the tangling of their limbs and were aware of their nakedness and there was a lapse in their movement as they realized how bare they were.

 

Their eyes locked, bodies brushing in unexpected places, skin catching on skin. They arranged themselves till they were side by side on the covers, faces only inches apart, taken in by the sudden peace.

 

They were still, staring at each other, as if they were unsure of where to start, until Dean’s hand drifted forward and fitted into the dip of Cas’ hip, and Cas smiled.

 

Dean caved in at that smile. Something good – a good ache in the center of his chest – shifted towards the man in his arms. The best way of being broken: to be broken open for someone else.

 

It was a smile of relief and contentedness; infinite, soft. Love.

 

“Sometimes I think you’re not real,” Dean whispered, pushing Cas’ hair back away from his face.

 

Cas followed his hand, pressing into it, kissing his palm.

 

“How could you be real?” Dean said. “Everything about you – I don’t know anymore.”

 

Cas breathed a laugh, nuzzling against Dean’s fingers. They trailed down his face, tracing over the bridge of his nose, his cheekbones, the high lines of his forehead. Dean’s thumb dragged over his brows and swept under his eyes before smudging the corner of his mouth.

 

There was no rush. Even as thoughts of all the wicked terrible redness of the times before dozed like miasma in the backs of their minds, they were just as easily smoothed, reduced to haze. There was no danger of that here, they knew, instinctively. Not here with the wind through the open panes, not here where they could call one another _husband_.

 

There would be no pain in this. No rush.

 

Even as Cas’ mouth parted, as he drew two of Dean’s fingers into his mouth and then released them again. He rolled slightly while Dean skimmed them down his neck, idly mapping the veins. He found Cas’ pulse and rested the pads of his fingers over it.

 

No hurry.

 

Hand traveling down Cas’ neck, and his mouth followed, tongue and lips, not the slightest scrape of teeth, and Cas moaned and sighed, pushed his body against the wanderings of Dean’s palms.

 

“You’re so beautiful.”

 

Cas gasped; the wet kisses on his chest made him tremble. He was so used to the clamor, the claw, the tooth and red of it that the gentleness overwhelmed him. Dean’s words swirled into his head; ribbons of deep green and pale yellow all swimming together; sleepy blue-grey, rich brown, dark red, painting the insides of his eyes and the corners of his vision with the lull of his voice.

 

“Beautiful,” Dean said again, hand brushing over Cas’ stomach. The muscles leapt under his touch, Cas’ body rising and falling as his fingers drifted downward, scratched through the thatch of hair between his hips, palmed his cock.

 

Cas’ head tipped back and Dean sucked a dull mark on the curve of his ribcage.

 

“Oh,” Cas breathed, eye lashes fluttering. The ceiling stretched above his head, constellations appearing out of the stucco – flowers and stars and fish.

 

Dean shifted, moved down between his legs and pushed them open, kissed the insides of his thighs, mouthed at the sharp lines of his hips.

 

“I love this part of you,” he murmured, nosing at the jutting bones. He loved all of him – but these places especially. These nooks and secret places, the swell and rise of joints, the curved architecture of his pelvis, the nip of his waist, the firm muscle of his legs, pretty cock tight against his stomach.

 

Hopelessly human. Hopelessly lovely in the vulnerable way only intimacy could appreciate.

 

Cas opened his mouth, lost for words. Soft breath fanned across stretches of skin left flushed under Dean’s mouth, scattering kisses over the tops of his thighs and the edges of his cock. His legs fell wider and Dean smiled, nuzzled against him, caught his breath.

 

He was drunk on the sight of him, the feel of him when he finally drew his cock into his mouth, alive and full. His fingers smoothed over Cas’ hips, keeping him still for the moment, anticipating the sudden jerk from the body beneath him. Dean kept him buried in his mouth and breathed, pulled off, circled the head, slid down again, eyes opening to glance up at the face of his husband. Cas was staring at him, hands clenching on the sheets, opening and coming to rest on the back of his head. His pink mouth was slack and his red chest rose with every pull of Dean’s lips over him.

 

Dean’s hand trailed down, touching in dark spaces, and Cas whimpered. The hot cave of Dean’s mouth, tender warmth from base to tip; supple flicks of his tongue and the seeking press against him. There was a momentary pause and Dean leaned up to kiss Cas’ stomach.

 

“Slick in the drawer, I think,” he whispered, against the damp skin, and Castiel’s fingers fumbled as they rattled open the nightstand, blindly feeling for it. He passed it to Dean and his hand fell back over the pillow, clutching the fabric.

 

He didn’t know how to say what he felt, how to convey the thoughts tumbling through his head—so he let his body speak for him, opened himself up wider, pressed upwards towards Dean bent so reverently over him, sought for his mouth, sought for his wonderful hands. Wet heat – something so beautiful in the indelicacy of it, a simplicity he had craved. The distraction of Dean’s tongue on his cock as he coaxed him apart, fingers moving into him, gentle – slow, building into something burning and bright and incomprehensible.

 

 _In him._ The words shuddered over his mind. _Into him_ , taking rest, coming in, into him, and he would be around him, two into one.

 

“Now.”

 

Dean looked up, moved up, and Cas took his face in his hands.

 

“Now,” Cas whispered, and Dean could see the shine behind his eyes.

 

“In you,” Dean said softly, and Cas nodded, thumb dragging over the swollen pink of Dean’s lip.

 

“ _With_ me.”

 

Sacred invitation. Slow burn, as he gave himself up to it.

 

Took him in.

 

His arms circling Dean’s back, Dean’s breath on his shoulder, his neck, the knock of their chins, the brush of their mouths, the roll of their tongues.

 

A quiet break, a moment of captured transcendence.

 

“In me—”

 

Cas’ voice broke.

 

With him, in him, like nothing he’d ever felt. Soul within soul, stones cradled in the same gentle hand, and then swaying – trees in the wind; cherry blossoms floating in spirals behind his eyes, motes of quiet dust, the creak of floorboards as the bed shifted. Quiet. Quiet.

 

He could hear them breathing into each other, could hear the slides of their mouths, the join of their bodies, dull sounds – swaying.

 

Dean’s head on his shoulder, swaying – day lilies in the golden fields of Missouri, their heads nodding, clumps of calico aster, a house, a tall house…the taut pull of Dean’s shoulders under his hands as when he’d moved with that house-raising rope, pulling, effortless, easy.

 

Houses – houses being built between them, raising up off of them, climbing up through the rafters, spangles of ivy and indigo on their walls. Strong and sturdy and honest, and everything they could have dreamed.

 

Dean rocked into Cas, long smooth strokes opening them up, in and in and in. Closed distance with no room between them, and he felt weightless, hands traveling up over Cas’ legs, his sides, meeting.

 

Water to shore. Coming together and together and together, and the coil in the bottom of his spine twisting tighter still and no resistance, no wall between them, only space filled and space made and the divine union between them.

 

Slow like dancing. Slow like Sundays, like—like dancing, perpetual, graceful. Dancing in Galilee in the early morning, and Dean had loved him then, and he loved him now. Loved him, and it was all he knew for a moment—that big, deep, crazy love.

 

Easy strokes of his hand around Cas’ cock, open-mouthed kisses at his neck, the stutter, and Cas clenched, gripped him, held him, and then white.

 

White.

 

Petals falling, white light in windows on dark roads, waiting, white sheets on beds, white stars pricked against his eyelids.

 

Collapsed very softly against one another, breathing. Hands inelegant but loving, palming, touching, wanting.

 

Open kisses, river-deep, slow water winding in ox-bow patterns, tongues curling.

 

A pause, the tilt of Cas’ head, their damp foreheads pressed together, legs slotting around each other.

 

A drop of laughter spilled, crystalline and childlike and heavy with satisfaction, with something so light that Dean couldn’t help but reach for it through the haze of satisfaction. His mouth, catching it, asking, and so lovingly obliged.

 

Cas’ laughter – like milk and honey – slipping down his throat.


	13. In the House of Olivia Delacroix, LA (Part Two)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "But when that long awaited day   
> Hangs ripe in the heavens, your voyaging stay.   
> Be morning, O Sun! with the lark in song,   
> Be afternoon for ages long.   
> And, Moon, let you and your lesser lights   
> Watch over a century of nights."

Fingers walked over his shoulder.

 

Dean smiled, eyes crinkling at the corners, watching them tiptoe over his damp skin. Little clumsy finger-steps treading over his chest, stumbling briefly on his collarbone before regaining their balance again.

 

Cas lay with his cheek resting on Dean’s arm, settled close to him, counting the inches his fingers crossed as they wandered over his husband’s body. They paused every once in a while, having minds of their own, as if to admire some distraction on a garden path, rubbing and nudging at the creases and rounded places they met.

 

He lifted his head and sat up, swinging his leg over Dean’s waist, looking down on him.

 

“Here, I’ll measure you,” he said, and Dean’s smile widened.

 

It was deep night. There wasn’t a clock in the room, but they could tell. The world outside dozed, but sleep hadn’t come for them. They stayed awake, shattered together a time or two again, and now were content to lie there, absorbed in each other.

 

Cas took Dean’s arms and spread them out on either side of his body, flat on the mattress. Slowly, he ran palms over the length of them, till their fingers met. Nearly the same. Cas' fingers were only a slight edge longer, but Dean’s hands were more palm than finger. Cas traced the lines along the inside of Dean’s hands and the slight rise of the veins in his wrists, following it to the soft crook of his elbow. He compared their arms, side by side. Fine-haired and both of them strong, but Dean’s were heavier, more solid. Cas was compact, all thin and wiry muscle, the skin pulled a little tighter over his bones.

 

Dean felt along the top of Cas’ thighs and up towards his hips, settling at the small of his back.

 

“I have seen so much,” Cas mused, casual and airy, tapping Dean’s collarbone, dragging fingers over his chest. He adjusted a little against the soft warmth of Dean’s stomach. “The Okavango delta during the floods...sequoia trees when they were hardly more than seedlings...the heights of every mountain on this planet. I walked the flat earth where they would be before my Father pushed them up into existence.” His voice was soft and thoughtful. He picked up Dean’s hands, pushed them together, fingers steepling under his touch. He raised the cathedral of bone and skin to his lips and kissed.

 

“I have seen so many things. Things you wouldn’t believe,” he murmured, nuzzling his mouth against Dean’s knuckles. “But you are so beautiful and whole that none of it could ever compare.”

 

He sighed this, as though he were finally at peace in the truth of it. It was alright to think that Dean was more beautiful than anything, because he was. Everything Cas had always suspected of him was true. Heaven might have considered him a coal mine of a man, but the diamond of his soul was what Castiel treasured.

 

Dean pulled Cas’ hands to his chest and rubbed the backs of them, willed his heart to beat straight into the Cas’ palm, to lift out of his body and sit captured in the cradle of Cas’ fingers.

 

“Maybe you’re the one Shakespeare was writing about,” Dean said suddenly, and Cas tilted his head, smiling at him. “You know, all those dead poets. Maybe they were writing about you the whole time, and they didn’t know it.”

 

“Wouldn’t be the first time someone had written about me,” Cas said, slipping his hands free from Dean’s to run them down his chest and over his middle.

 

“I’m just saying,” Dean said. “Maybe I was Shakespeare. You never know. He could have been a catfish.”

 

“He was clever enough, yes,” Cas replied. He bent for a kiss.

 

Dean pulled him closer, arms winding around him, one hand slipping back up into his hair, and Cas let his weight settle over Dean’s chest.

 

“You’re worth dead poets,” Dean said, against Cas’ jaw. It was such a pretty idea.

 

They sank back into silence again.

 

It was cool in the little room, but not enough to need the sheets. They bowed towards each other, face to face, Cas’ head pillowed on Dean’s arm. Dean raked the hair back from Cas’ forehead, petting it down, and Cas hid his face in Dean’s shoulder for a moment.

 

“I like being tired with you,” Dean murmured, and Cas peeked out. “Does that make sense?”

 

Cas nodded his head in understanding.

 

“It’s nice,” Dean continued. “'S a good tired.”

 

“You can always rest with me, Dean,” Cas whispered, and Dean touched his face. “I mean that. You’ve come a long way. You deserve to stop sometimes.”

 

“I think you’re the only one who can make me believe that, sometimes,” Dean chuckled, trailing away. “You’re the only one I let myself do that with, anyway.”

 

Cas nestled closer to him, lifted his hand to stroke the back of his head and down to his neck. Dean’s eyes were slipping shut and his body felt warm and heavy.

 

It was bliss there, with Cas, stroking his hair.

 

“Let’s sleep, then,” Dean mumbled, and Cas kissed the side of his neck and his cheek. “I’m tired.”

 

“There is so much time,” Cas said, and Dean felt that it was not to him that this was said, but to the house, or to the bed.

 

So much time, there in the little room. No worry.

 

So much time between them.

 

* * *

 

And so they slept a while, their bodies flush and tangled, mouths mere millimeters from one another; the night crept on and on past the wide open window, warm and breezy, rattling the cypress trees, stirring the cicadas in soft rhythms. Neither dreamed—anything worth dreaming of was right beside them, only a finger's breadth away.

 

Loose and open bodies angled into one another on the bed, the sheets stirring in the soft wind that pulled itself into the room, smoothing their skin. Not a deep sleep but a restful one, and when they woke a little while later from the shallowness of it they turned their heads to look out the dark space of the window, and saw the pinpricked stars making their dancing way across the sphere of the sky.

 

It seemed that the night was drawing itself thin for them—not a hint of dawn to be seen yet, though they were sure it was past midnight, but of all the miracles they had seen this perhaps would have been the least surprising, a twilight pushing time aside in their honor. It seemed the sort of thing to be done on a wedding night.

 

Shivering a little with the new wakefulness they drowsily made love again, fumbling and laughing quiet into one another's shoulders, and this time it was Castiel who found his way inside Dean, their chests near-flat, hips rolling slowly, easily, like the roiling lazy tide of the river outside and down below. In the India-ink blackness Cas thought that the shadows that draped Dean's body seemed almost to paint him muddy; Dean for his part held Castiel's hips as they rocked and urged and marveled at the salt starlight caught in those pale eyes, fringed with dark lashes soft as eiderdown against his cheek.

 

The world drifted down into semblances of consciousness—Castiel's hands leaving errant touch in their wake, his soft breath in Dean's ear, the heated places where their bodies joined, the ecstatic fullness of them both, and it wasn't too much longer before they were coming in gentle gasps, hips shuddering, mouths falling open, warmth blooming like frangipani blossoms into their chests, like saplings sprouting and knocking at their ribcages, and Cas slipped out of him with a little sigh and they kissed long, and deep, and open, no sooner satisfied than ready to sleep again, sleep together with their bodies bare beneath the night, the marzipan whirling night and the heavy scent of flowers on the air.

 

They slept; a little deeper now, unworried about the length of the dark, or the sweat and come drying on their skin, entirely content with nearness and blackness and the silvery landscapes of their bones on the bed.

 

* * *

 

Dawn arrived, at some eventual moment, and when Dean woke it was to find Cas standing at the open window, leaning against its sill on his elbows, looking out into the grey of very early morning. Naked as the day itself, of course—the pale arc of his back, the dip of shadow where flesh caved towards his spine, one foot flexed at the toes, sole facing the room. Birds where chittering down near the water, and the very first faint glow of the sun was teasing the horizon past his profile, smoothing up into the blue of receding night.

 

Dean sat up, yawned; his eyelids felt heavy, content. Cas turned his head a little toward the sound of him and said, softly, “Good morning.”

 

Dean slipped out of bed, came to him, stood by the window with him. His hand rested in the small of Cas' back, caressed a little up and down.

 

Below the house, the river, and the trees; and past the river, the opposite bank, and far away to the north the dusky silhouette of the city, rising like a beacon over the marshlands. An egret stalked something in the shallows, a mere smudge of white.

 

There was, overwhelmingly, the smell of flowers.

 

Cas tipped his head towards the riverbank, smiling a little, and Dean followed his gaze. All up through the mud and the weeds, more and more the further the sun crept into the sky, Dean could see blue—Virgin Mary blue, nodding and waving in the early light, overtaking the banks as if to devour the river itself with the dark rich color. As far as he could see from one horizon to the other.

 

He knew what they were without knowing. “Columbine,” he said, and Cas nodded.

 

They stood awhile in silence, watching the world wake slowly, lifting to the rising sun. A very easy sunrise, spreading over the water and the land like molasses or honey, lending a little warmth to the wind.

 

“I'm hungry,” Cas said, after a time, lazy.

 

“D'you think there's food downstairs?”

 

“Mm. I'm sure there were things left over from the party.”

 

They stared out the window still, out over the quiet world.

 

“Should probably put clothes on if we're going downstairs.”

 

“Mmm.”

 

Dean breathed, slow. “Just to be polite.”

 

“Mmm.” Cas leaned into him a little, tilted his face up towards the day. “Only if we don't have to stay in them long.”

 

Dean laughed, and Cas laughed as well, and with easy limbs they held one another for a moment, kissed, breathed; retrieved their trousers from the floor, the loose wedding things, and helped each other dress, if only partway, buttoning buttons and smoothing fabric. The suspenders Sam had so carefully fitted into the small of Cas' back still dangled from his hems.

 

When they opened the door to the wedding bedroom it didn't make a sound, and it seemed that the whole house filled with breath, everything dim and lacy with early luminescence, and if their feet made any noise upon the stairs, then it was only the sound of old timbers settling, under the tread of much-beloved weight.

 

* * *

 

“Try this.”

 

Dean smiled, tearing off a piece of the chicken and holding out for Cas to take. Dean ate his own piece, leaning between Cas’ legs where he sat on the counter, head back against the upper cabinets.

 

The faucet in the sink next to them dripped water into the porcelain basin, and Dean stifled a laugh as Cas pushed a grape at his mouth.

 

Dean reached over and tipped more of the bottle of leftover warm wine into the glass beside them, taking a long sip and offering it back to Cas. He held the cup for him, Cas’ fingers holding his wrists, and when he was finished he smiled at Dean over the edge and gently guided it towards the counter. Dean’s hands suddenly were busy stroking his face.

 

The wine spread a hot flush over them, made Cas blush, and Dean play-bit at his neck and shoulders, nuzzling into him, rubbing his face on his chest and bumping under his chin. They punctuated bites with kisses, colanders of fruit and plates forgotten for minutes at a time.

 

Cas leaned back against the cabinet and pinned his knees to Dean’s sides, staring at him, half-lidded and cheeks still red, mouth kiss-swollen and slack. Dean dragged his thumb over the hazy pink of his lower lip and Cas pushed towards him, hips rolling up off the counter, legs crooking to bring Dean in closer. There was a scrape of porcelain while Dean pushed the plates further aside and pulled Cas in by the waist, mouths hovering a fraction apart.

 

Wordlessly, Cas wound his arms around Dean’s neck and locked his legs around his waist and Dean stepped back from the counter, bumping slightly at the table. He carried Cas to the stairs, barely able to manage – Cas’ mouth was searing over his, wet and open, coaxing his tongue out to roll with his, still fuzzy with spices and the faint tang of wine and of rum from the cake they'd eaten.

 

He pushed him up against the bannister and Cas slid out of his arms, their bodies bumping, his hand on the back of Dean’s neck, keeping them together for a moment before he let them wander down. He palmed Dean through the front of his pants and Dean grinned, kneading at the dip of Cas’ back. Cas looped his fingers into Dean’s belt loops, tugging, and walked backwards up the steps, leading him.

 

Dean’s arms framed his head on either side of the door once they reached it, kissing his neck – gold sunlight spilled under the crack at the bottom, striping their bare feet.

 

Cas’ toes curled.

 

He felt for the door handle and let his weight fall against the wood, the door swinging in. He took Dean’s hands, wove their fingers together, the sun already begging to touch him, splaying at his back, haloing his head.

 

Dean let himself be held closely and carefully, pulled back into the dream, back into the room, into gold.

 

 

* * *

 

They’d come together so easily – drawn back into each other, bodies magnetized.

 

Needed to be in and surrounding each other, indistinguishable. It was too cold to be apart, it seemed, even for a little. Magically, it seemed, every instance of their touch felt new.  
  


Cas rocked his hips down, hands slipping on Dean’s stomach, up over his chest. He leaned back and forward, every movement sending rolls of pleasure down his spine; the sensation of warm water trickling down his back from the crown of his head to the backs of his knees, pooling in the low point of him, where gravity nestled and tugged him down onto Dean’s cock.

 

Dean watched him, eyes glued to his face, the rapture of his expression as their bodies came together and apart. Dean could easily say he was going to grow addicted to these times where they were part of the same body, tied to each other, bound up in flesh and skin and bone. Here, where there wasn’t an ache of apartness. Just fulfillment, enjoyment – delight in each other.

 

Dean’s hand slicked over the head of Cas’ cock, pulling a sigh from him.

 

“That’s good,” he whispered. “So good, Dean.” He arched towards the circle of Dean’s fist and breathed again.

 

“Yeah?” Dean drawled, pulling Cas’ cock gently. Cas exhaled a laugh; Dean was nudging at that place inside of him that made everything fireflies.

 

“Yeah.” He smiled, eyes closed, brow drawing together after a second, mouth open in wordless praise. He had been wrong before, really. It wasn’t being broken apart. Dean was full and hot and thick and putting him back together, sewing him back up into his skin, everything where it belonged again with Dean inside him.

 

“Here,” Dean said, propping himself up on his elbows, and Cas slowed, let Dean arrange them so that he was sitting up, Cas a tangle on his lap, cock trapped against the plane of Dean’s belly. Dean wound his arms around his back, and Cas rocked again, gasping against Dean’s mouth now so near to his.

 

“You like this?” Dean murmured, and Cas touched his neck, his hair, let his hands slip down to Dean’s forearms. His fingers moved to the headboard where Dean was leaning and curled over the wood there for a moment.

 

He—oh—he liked it.

 

“Deep,” he managed, and Dean pushed up unexpectedly, and he clutched the back of Dean’s head, met his mouth while Dean rubbed circles over his shoulders. Their subtle motion made his cock rut against Dean’s stomach and Cas breathed ragged, soft sounds against Dean’s temple, wet kisses being strung over his neck. Cas rolled his head and Dean sucked marks on the side of his throat, fingers pulling and pressing on the skin of his sides, squeezing gently.

 

“Baby,” Dean whispered after a while, and Cas could feel the start of the spiral, the pins-and-needles in his feet, travel up his body. Every brush of his cock against Dean’s stomach left him reeling, in time with the shifts where Dean was buried inside of him, Dean’s face hidden in his neck, their chests scraping with every shallow thrust pushing them further together.

 

Cas gently lifted his head to kiss him again, only to stop when his hips kept twitching forward against Dean’s body.

 

“Dean—” He sucked in a breath, and it stalled, and Dean kissed his shoulder, panting.

 

“That’s right,” Dean whispered, encouraging. “Show me, sweetheart—”

 

Cas didn’t hear the rest; everything locked up and he slumped against Dean, breathing deeply through his nose. Dean was doing the same, stroking the damp skin between his shoulder blades.

 

His eyelashes fluttered, catching on Dean’s shoulder. He could see his freckles in the undisturbed daylight. Gold and brown flecks down his arms.

 

Dean’s arms heavy, heavy, on his back. The curtain rustled in front of the window, pale fabric catching the light. The shadows of leaves shimmered across the wall and dappled the floor. A bird sang in the afternoon calm while they caught their breath and Dean kissed the crown of Cas’ head, the edges of his hair where sweat and heat had made it curl flat against his temples. His fingers combed through them at the base of his neck.

 

Not long after they had a bath, knees knocking in the tub, scratching through each other’s soapy hair, hands cupped to prevent any sting in the eyes.

 

They kissed while the water drained and dried each other off, toweling at shins and waists and feet and necks and faces, the breeze cool on their skin. They tumbled back into bed and wrestled a moment, shoving and pushing, child-like and joking, before they collapsed, Cas’ body cat-like and stretched out over Dean’s, legs tangled.

 

The drowsy afternoon settled in the room and Dean moved restlessly.

 

They snuck down the stairs again, still a while later, as if they’d be scolded, but the house was vacant. Olivia and Sam on some errand, they were sure.

 

Chasing steps down the porch, a dancing movement, and Dean caught Cas by the middle, hands knotted over his stomach, pulling him in, back – the pop of his spine, the scruff of Dean’s stubble above the limp collar of his wedding shirt. Cas’ barked laugh.

 

Dean’s bare-tooth smile, biting his shoulder, his arm, shoved off again, greeted with an empty chastisement. Cas went tripping into the weedy grass, ambling along, wondering at the birds above and the tilt of the cypress branches, the perfume of columbine at the river edge, the swollen din of toads and crickets.

 

He turned, after a while of examining the grass, the downy heads of dandelions, and held out his arms to net Dean in them. They strolled.

 

The soles of their feet were dirty and scuffed at the ground as they walked down by the river, arms slung around each other’s waists. Dean’s fingers slid under the waistband of Cas’ trousers, feeling the scrunched edges of his shirt hastily tucked in.

 

The wind wandered with them, blowing them back towards the house sometime after. Time was strange there. An hour or a minute, it was all the same after a while.

 

They had gone up and down the stretch of the river, talking in low voices about things inconsequential, trivial conversations about the grass, the sky, the flowers, each other. In perfect step they traipsed up and down and went to the dock, parked themselves over the edge and looked at the calm water, the silent rush of something mighty under the rickety wood frame that teetered under their weight.

 

 

* * *

 

Olivia sat in the kitchen peeling potatoes, with Sam at her elbow shucking onions, when they both heard the back door creak open.

 

The faint patter of naked feet, a shadow on the floor through the doorway of two figures so close you couldn’t tell them apart as they made their way upstairs, the shadow growing smaller till it disappeared.

 

“I figure we’ll give 'em one more day to be moony,” Olivia whispered, patting Sam’s hand.

 

The house closed itself back up to gentle quiet, anticipating.

 

Night was closing fast, coming swift, and chasing the sun in her golden chariot. It would drop soon, like a fallen handkerchief from God’s fingers, and with it the hush, and the time of lovers again, stretching on and on and on.

 

* * *

 

The newlyweds kept mostly to the wedding bedroom for another night and morning, only slipping out when they thought Sam and Olivia were unaware, to steal soft moments with each other in different airs for a while. For most of those two days Sam kept himself quietly and contentedly busy—helping Olivia cook the suppers they shared, wandering the riverbank, calling Lily whenever the sunlight made him drowsy enough to spill his heart across the satellite lines.

 

He liked it here, in New Orleans, or on its outskirts. The house seemed just big enough for all of them, even if it were only, he knew, to hold them for a little while, and whenever he found himself walking on the riverbank with his hands in his pockets and the summer wind pushing his hair back from his face, he thought that nowhere else had he seen a sky so endless, or so perfectly painted.

 

Nevertheless the inevitable restlessness came. Sam knew it had arrived when he woke the last morning of the wedding week to a dull and stirring itch under his skin, and when Dean and Cas made themselves known a little before lunch, appearing like mirages into the dusty gold of Olivia's front room.

 

No matter how welcome they felt in this place, he knew, they weren't meant to stay here long. Yet it was not with sadness that they realized this, Sam thought—looking at Dean's face, and Castiel's, as they came shyly in to say hello to him. When they left they wouldn't leave forever. That was a certainty.

 

Over lunch Sam observed them from under his eyelashes, trying to hold back a smile at what he saw. Whatever magnetism had made them so irresistibly tactile the night of the wedding seemed to have worn off, just a bit; still they sat side by side at Olivia's dining room table, shoulders brushing, exchanging little smiles and glances, and Olivia asked how they felt, and they replied that they felt fantastic, wonderful, every adjective in between. Sam knew it was true by the glow of their faces. He ate and watched and felt a stir in his chest that meant that they were happy, and that he, in turn, was very happy, too.

 

Olivia seemed to understand the restlessness as well, and she asked them where they would go.

 

Dean pondered the question for a long time, looking off out the kitchen window to the waving green of the cypresses under the sun.

 

“I'm not sure,” he said, after a while.

 

“You told me,” Olivia said, tapping her spoon a little against her ceramic bowl, “that you were going to build these two a house, mashwarohn.”

 

Cas smiled a little, and Sam as well, and Dean leaned back a little in his chair.

 

“Yeah,” he said. “I still want to do that.”

 

There was a rustle beneath the table, and Cas tipped sideways to peer under; the yellow python was draping herself over his feet, as if moodily pinning him in place.

 

“Will you go back to your old ways?” the bokor woman asked. “Killing all the dark things?”

 

The trio exchanged glances. Their wide eyes held no answers for one another.

 

“Someday,” Cas said, quietly, after a moment. “When we're needed again.”

 

Olivia nodded, her lips tight. “Good,” she said, curt. “That's a good thing. World may be celebrating now, might be all daylight, but dark will come again. A sad thing but true.”

 

“But not for a while yet,” Sam said, “I hope.” He thought of the orchard in Wisconsin, for an instant.

 

“No, sweet child,” Olivia said, reaching out to pat his hand with fingers heavy and beringed. “Not just yet. There's time still for rejoicing.”

 

As it turned out, it was the last meal they would share there in Olivia Delacroix's house; by that early evening they were ready to be gone, could feel the asphalt of whatever distant highway they chose next already thrumming in their bones. The old woman helped them pack what they had unpacked, made up boxes of food for them to take, insisting that no honored guests would leave her home empty-handed while Riverlander blood still ran through her veins. The wedding gifts, almost too sparse and small and simple to be fathomed, found their way into old hatboxes, so worn with age as to be almost unrecognizable, and were placed in the Impala's trunk above the warped secret panel that hid the arsenal beneath.

 

The sun was beginning to sink by the time they were ready to leave, and Dean closed the trunk of the car over their bags and dusted off his hands against his jeans, and went inside to call Cas out from wherever he'd wandered. He left Sam and Olivia chatting on the porch, the python nestled across the threshold of the front like a doormat.

 

“Cas?” he called, and was answered empty, and so he mounted the stairs. He had a thought where his husband— _husband,_ such a word!—might be hiding.

 

Castiel was standing in the open doorway of the wedding bedroom, sure enough, with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder, Sam's old red plaid shirt unbuttoned and untucked and too big on his scrawny frame, his back to the house, staring in, and Dean came to him and touched his waist.

 

“Are we leaving?” Cas said, softly, and Dean nodded.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Cas breathed, his eyes searching the now-empty room, just as they'd left it—the bed still a mess of tangled sheets, the window still open, the violets still nodding in their vase. The view, as if that of a painting, of the river and the columbine down below, and the whole vast sky stretching off and away.

 

“But we'll come back,” Cas said, a reassurance to himself.

 

Dean settled his chin for a moment in the crook of Castiel's shoulder.

 

“I'd stake my life on it.”

 

Cas nodded, once, short, and then hefted his bag and turned, smiled up at Dean, into the face he'd come to memorize and recognize as well as the mere memory of his own.

 

Together they went down the creaking stairs, into the melting openness of evening, the damp humidity and buzzing air. Olivia kissed them all, and Baby twined around their ankles as if to trip or trap them, and with many a fond gaze flung backward to the leaning house the trio swung into the Impala, her old wheels leaning under their weight.

 

For one moment more they sat there, looking up at the house, and at Olivia watching them on the porch.

 

Sam took a breath and said, “Where to now?”

 

The keys jangled in Dean's hand, and after only an instant more of hesitation he pushed them into the ignition and felt the rumble of the engine beneath him, and took it in—looked at Castiel in the rear-view mirror, at Sam beside him, at the river rolling past against the slopes.

 

“Wherever,” he said, and grinned.


	14. Epilogue - Elsewhere

On September eighteenth of what would come to be known as the Columbine Summer, a phenomenal blossoming of _aquilegia nuragica_ was reported from the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi emptied out into the sea, all the way past the smallest dwindlings of the great river at the peaking center of Minnesota. The blooms overtook the banks in numbers no living botanist had ever seen, and numbers no dead botanist had ever recorded. Being a species endemic to Italy, the miraculous nature of their overwhelming appearance in the American midwest did not go unnoticed.

 

For two nights following the eighteenth of September, the aurora borealis, in all parts of the globe, was recorded as being at its brightest in living memory.

 

In Greenacre, Wisconsin, the peach orchard owned by the Francis family gave up its last hurrah of the harvest, an intake such as none in the family had ever witnessed. Clint Francis announced, at one of his infamous family dinners, that they had profited enough this year so as to be able, if they wished, to offer the orchard up to other buyers, and move on with their lives; of course, no one present could have desired anything less.

 

Lily Francis kept her cell phone tucked beneath her hand and against her knee beneath the table that night, and every night that followed.

 

Dubois, Iowa saw a peculiar closing at one of the popular Mexican restaurants off the highway. No reason was given for the sudden holiday from service, but when the restaurant opened again some days later, it was with the air of something grand and sacred having been observed in the employees' absence. The waitress named Rosa Moa refused to divulge the secret of the happy flush upon her face to anyone, even to the most loyal of customers.

 

Galilee, Illinois finally saw off the great and confounding kingfisher migration as the world tipped into full autumn. Seventeen weddings were held in the town dance hall in October alone. Nate and Sugar Byrne played every one.

 

Le Beau reported no drownings, of children or otherwise, along its shores, for a very long time, and every year it was remarked that the cherry trees kept by Matsu Kami and his granddaughter bloomed brighter and more vibrant than was thought possible.

 

Sheriff Earl Jones received a package in the post a few days before Halloween of that year containing only the weather-beaten water-worn river journal of Winston Maxwell, and a note tucked inside the failing front covers that offered no explanation, only the words: _thank you._

 

David Parsons retired not long after, finally, too tired to continue chasing his demons. He opened a quiet roadhouse in northern Kentucky which catered to hunters and ordinary folk alike, and found himself much more suited to giving advice to the young ones than he was at anything else.

 

On the rise known as River Ridge, above Elsbrook, Missouri, Mathilda Lawrence continued to wile away her days, and passed away quietly in early November. When her neighbors—the closest to any surviving kin she may have had—discovered and read her will, it was to find that she had left all that she owned, house and inheritance all, to a family by the name of Winchester. They were found to have no forwarding address—only a cell phone number.

 

Upon receiving word of Mathilda's last wish, where they were spending a week at the Grand Canyon, Sam and Dean and Castiel agreed without much hesitation that they would accept the things outlined in her will. Dean complained that he had always wanted to be the one to build their home, but Cas and Sam soothed him without much effort. A house already built on love, and lived in well, would suit them just fine.

 

A sizable portion of Mathilda's money made its way to Memphis, Tennessee, to arrive in the mail slot of one surnameless Celeste, along with the small and heavy Riverlands Hymnal, with the simple instructions: _copy the book, only a few. Use the money to get on your feet. With love—the Winchesters._

 

The woman with the universe on her back did just that, and with much of the cash found a man in the city willing to print five copies: one to send back, one for herself, and the others—the others to do with whatever she wished.

 

In ways that only Celeste understood, she sent the remaining three out into the world.

 

 

* * *

 

It was said, much later, when such things began to be spoken of again, that on that particular September eighteenth, a peculiar thing had occurred. A demonologist in Nebraska heard it first, from the lips of some Hellspawn in the midst of its exorcism throes.

 

It was said that on that day, every soul and creature in the Pits of Hell had ceased their screaming and their torture for a long, bare, blinding instant, and had lifted their faces to a great and terrible light that had spread across the holocaust like a whisper of salvation.

 

 

* * *

 

Somewhere in America, Chuck Shurley woke from a dreamless sleep.

 

He didn't realist it, of course, until he was midway through pouring a hearty dose of Jack Daniels into a coffee mug on his dingy kitchen counter. He was badly in need of a shave; the shirt he wore under his ratty striped bathrobe was stained with coffee; there was printer ink smudged irretrievably against the sides of his fingers. He was sighing, rubbing at his bloodshot eyes, barely aware of how close the liquor was to spilling over the edge of his mug, when he realized that the previous night had been entirely devoid of visions.

 

Perhaps too quickly, he paused; he set down the bottle of Jack Daniels and stood for a moment, eyes shifting from side to side across his kitchen, as if sussing out the presence of someone hidden; but of course only birds sang in the hazy sunlight outside, and nothing leapt at him from the corners of his kitchen. Only the fact that he had not dreamed that night.

 

In a state of some bewilderment Chuck went about his morning; he showered, shaved, put on something clean for once, and decided—much to his own surprise—that it felt like a nice morning for a walk. He spared his glowing computer screen only one glance before he slipped on his autumn jacket and ventured out onto the cracked and weedy sidewalks.

 

The park was bustling for a Friday morning, he thought, as he approached it where it lay on the street a few blocks from his house. The playground was pleasantly overrun with children in coats and boots, mothers reading romance novels on the benches, joggers, dog-walkers on the pavements.

 

Breathing the first real fresh air he'd breathed in months, Chuck found an empty bench and took a seat, hands in his pockets. He wished he'd brought something to read so as not to look awkward, but the sun was high and cool, and he settled for watching birds fight over a few crumbs on the sidewalk, and squirrels dart from tree to tree a little ways off.

 

His head felt strangely light. He wasn't used to it—having nothing to frantically record, nothing to ponder and bemoan.

 

He was lost in vague and absent thought when he became aware that he wasn't alone on the plastic park bench, and when he turned his head it was to see that he had been joined by a man who looked so old as to be almost made of paper skin and bones, dressed all in black, and dark hair severe against his scalp.

 

Chuck observed him for a moment and then returned his attention outward, to the world.

 

The newcomer sat in silence for a while, watching with him. One of his clawed hands was fastened tight around the knob of a cane.

 

The other slipped into his suit coat pocket, and he sighed.

 

“You,” said Death, pulling out a crisp white handkerchief, bunched up in his fist, “need to learn to keep better track of your love stories.”

 

Chuck smiled to himself, blinked against the light.

 

“I wondered if that was why.”

 

“You know perfectly well that was why.” Death sniffed, still holding the handkerchief in his hand. “I take it you've stopped dreaming.”

 

“Yeah. Last night, actually.”

 

“September eighteenth,” the old Horseman drawled, with something like distaste, or perhaps amusement. “One of these days, that knack for cliché and symbolism you have will earn you some very bad reviews.”

 

Chuck laughed, and surprised himself a little with it.

 

He turned to look at Death, tilted his head a little.

 

“What's that?” he said, peering at the white fabric in Death's hand.

 

“What do you think?”

 

Death extended his arm, and dropped the bunched-up thing into Chuck's upturned palms. The cloth fell open there; glinting a little in the morning sun, smooth and granite-grey, were two small stones, as whole and beautiful as if they'd just been plucked from the bed of a river.

 

Chuck smiled, fondly.

 

“Took you long enough,” he said, with affectionate derision, and Death scoffed, waved a gnarled hand in his direction.

 

“Don't go losing them again,” Death said, tightening his grip on his cane.

 

Chuck gently folded the stones back up into their handkerchief cradle and slipped it into his jacket pocket. They rested snug against his thigh. For a moment he was taken, briefly, with the fleeting image of a long black car climbing a steep rise, and a river rushing by below, and three familiar spirits nestled in the cool and savage metal.

 

“I won't,” he said.

 

They sat a while longer in the morning, side by side, the prophet and the Horseman, the Creator and his Opposite, watching the play of that early Friday, the motion of the birds and squirrels, the watercolor streaks of low clouds against the sky.

 

“What will you do now?” said Death, to break the noisy silence.

 

Chuck shrugged. “Anything, I suppose,” he said, softly. “My job's—done. For now.”

 

“Don't you have any more ridiculous stories in that head of yours?”

 

“Hundreds,” Chuck said, and smiled. “But they're not mine.”

 

Death snorted. “And you find that—stimulating.”

 

“I think it's someone else's turn to tell a big story,” said the prophet; and he stood, getting unsteadily to his crooked feet, and the pocket full of stones knocked against his hip.

 

He smiled at Death, and Death returned a grudging twitch of the lips, and they existed a minute more in one another's company—both of them, it seemed, content in some way at last.

 

Chuck Shurley pushed his hands into his pockets. There was still morning to be had, still a walk to take, and he felt that for the first time in a long time the world was opening up beneath his feet.

 

Whistling, just a little, Elohim took his leave.

 

 

* * *

 

The Winchester family moved into the house on River Ridge in early December. Frost was beginning to leach onto the ground, creeping up from the Mississippi's edge, and all the trees were dead; the crisp chill of winter was coming on quick, closing in, as if to hurry them inside the place that was now their home.

 

A few weeks earlier, Sam had stolen the Impala out from under Dean's nose and driven north from their halfway motel in Colorado all the way to Wisconsin. He'd been gone for a solid week, and Dean and Castiel—unable to be too terribly worried, considering he called every night to apologize for taking the car—had spent the days wandering the tiny town they'd bunked up in, admiring the Rocky Mountains from afar.

 

Sam had returned with a six-pack of apologetic beer and Lily Francis on his arm.

 

Lily _Winchester_ , that is—nee Francis. They both sported rings on their fingers. They'd gotten married halfway back, at some courthouse in the middle of nowhere, and although Castiel's response was to raise his eyebrows at the new and sudden addition to the family, both he and Dean couldn't fathom anything to be bewildered about. They welcomed her with open arms and knowing smiles, all five-foot-four and towering smile of her, into the Impala's back seat, and east to the house that would be theirs, with nothing but one suitcase to her name.

 

Both reasoned that it would only have been a matter of time.

 

December, then, and the frost on the ground, and all the doors of the house on River Ridge open to air out the must of Mathilda's departure. There wasn't much to move in—only things to be cleaned, broken casements and wainscots to be fixed, and a pleasant clamor rang out from its halls out to the water—Dean, fixing the lean-to behind the place where wood would be stored in the cold months; Sam replacing the wallpaper in one of the upstairs bedrooms; Lily and Castiel finding places in the cabinets for the new dining sets they'd bought in Elsbrook, knocking elbows and grinning at each other like shy new friends. The sounds of porcelain mingling with the steady rhythm of Dean's hammer out back, and the loud curling sound of Sam tearing down the paper upstairs.

 

Lily eventually dusted off her hands and announced she was going to walk down the ridge a ways, to see the other tall houses; Cas thanked her for her help in the kitchen and stood awhile in the empty room, now, looking around at it all—their things mingled with Mathilda's; the glint of Lily's wedding ring as she passed through the hall again, pulling on her coat; the easy pound of Dean's tools like some effortless drumbeat making his presence known.

 

They were a family, Cas thought, with a smile. They were a proper little family in this place.

 

On a whim he left the kitchen, and mounted the stairs, taking each one slow and one at a time. He remembered pausing on the landing when they'd stayed here on the long journey, stopping to kiss Dean, back when everything had still been tainted wrong, and their intimacy still off-kilter. All of that blissfully smeared away, now, in the wake of the wedding.

 

His own simple silver band was cold when he pressed his fingers to his lips, remembering.

 

The bedroom where they'd slept, all those months ago, was to be theirs, they'd decided, and it was here that Cas wandered, into a cottony silence, gently removed from the sound of Dean's hammer and Sam's work down the hall. Here with the octagon window open, and the dead tree branches leaning into the space, and everything smelling of dust and something more.

 

Columbine, perhaps.

 

He went to the window, and looked out.

 

He could see Lily leaving the front of the house, taking the sharp veering turn off down the path; he could see the dock down at the bottom of the slope, with its unlit metal lantern keeping vigil over the greying water; he could see blossoms of ice taking hold of the edges of the banks, pushing down the grass, preparing for the snow.

 

Without knowing particularly why, Cas closed his eyes and pushed his fingers against them, rubbing some mild exhaustion from them, and when he opened them again it was to see the winter sun pulling out from behind the clouds, leaving glimmering specks of light against the river. To his eyes, for a moment, the Missouri landscape lay shimmering, fairy-lit and dazzling, everything made bright and wondrous, a momentary gathering of glamor on the water and the hills.

 

All things shining.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life on the Ridge continues [here.](http://winchestersontheridge.tumblr.com/)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover for "All Things Shining" by Askance and standbyme](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3115616) by [RunawayMarbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunawayMarbles/pseuds/RunawayMarbles)




End file.
